EG CEO Jameson steps down, will retain equity

Evil Geniuses CEO Nicole LaPointe Jameson has decided to step down from the organization after more than four years at the top. In an article with Digiday, Jameson answered several topics from how she was unprepared to be a public-facing CEO, joining from private equity firm Peak6, to handling controversies within the League of Legends division. In it, she also revealed that she has equity in Evil Geniuses itself and does not appear to sell it.

One of the hallmarks of Evil Geniuses and the new investment from Peak6 Investments was the acquisition of the NRG CS:GO roster in 2019, a surprise venture that was announced just before IEM New York 2019.

The team would win the event and later become the best team in the world before COVID-19 struck, sending the global competition into a lockdown and forcing a team that was on the precipice of greatness into forced online competition. Evil Geniuses would never regain that level of success in the title again.

In 2022, the organization ventured to do what nobody else had considered and acquired two of the top rosters in North America as part of their greater "Blueprint" program, hoping to create a 15-man roster and use players interchangeably on different rosters to create the best possible lineup.

However, a year later, the project could be considered a failure as the organization released most members of the main roster, entirely released the former Party Astronauts squad, and ended up promoting their ECL roster after multiple variations of their main team failed to yield tangible success.

In it, the main CS:GO roster saw immense turmoil that began with the failed signing of Keith "NAF" Markovic, who declined to join the organization and instead signed a multi-year contract renewal with Liquid. He would later describe the management of Evil Geniuses as some of the worst he's ever spoken to.

Instead, Evil Geniuses pursued Jake "Stewie2k" Yip, Will "RUSH" Wierzba, and Tim "autimatic" Ta to bring back the former glory of the 2018 Cloud9 Major winning roster.

However, only a few months in did the cracks show as Stewie2k ended up in a fight with head coach Damien "maLeK" Marcel which later blew up in a massive fight played out on Twitch. This was the beginning of the end as the organization would search endlessly for new European additions, only to see the team flounder on the international stage over and over again.

Jameson's time as CEO of Evil Geniuses remains complicated for fans of Counter-Strike. While she lead the arrival of the NRG team under the organization and remained committed to the North American region for so long, success has been few and far between in recent years. With her departure, it's unclear if changes will occur to the division and what this means for Counter-Strike fans.

Now, Evil Geniuses is moving on to Chris DeAppolonio as interim CEO who has previous experience with OpTic Gaming and Obey Alliance.