EVY tells us the story behind Evil Geniuses failure : "In the end, it was maLeK or Stewie"

"I wasn't involved in the creation of the roster. There was this thing with valde instead of RUSH, but there was already a base when I got there: CeRq, Brehze, Stewie2K, autimatic. On paper at first, before I met them, I think it's a shame to have RUSH instead of valde."

"Stewie, Damien (maLeK) had been told that he was kind of blacklisted and that he wasn't good as IGL, but other people, including EG, were saying that Stewie should be signed and that they believed in him. Damien was very hesitant to sign Stewie, and EG pushed hard 'we want him, he's a superstar, he won a major, he's the best player in the US, etc' and the balance finally tipped and he accepted Stewie. autimatic, I had heard good things about him, but he was coming back from valorant, so it was a risk, but one that was manageable. Brehze and CeRq, I didn't know them, I knew that CeRq was in a slump and that we had to make a system around him and that he had never been used properly. It was a real challenge."

"In the beginning, we did a bootcamp in Katowice to prepare for BLAST, 30 days in a hotel. It's training every day, one after the other, classic days of a pro team. At the beginning, we could feel that it was going to be complicated."



"The first night at the restaurant, I hear: 'My vision of a coach is a guy who doesn't call the shots and assists'."

"I'll make a comparison. When I was at G2, at first I had to work with kennyS. The first night he comes to me privately on Teamspeak and says 'I know we're going to work together, here's my number, call me anytime and we'll do what you want.' I expected the opposite from him, he is very open to feedback. It was the same with huNter and JACKZ. So to compare with EG, when I arrive, I expect the same mindset. We meet the first night at the restaurant and I hear stuff... "My vision of a coach is a guy who doesn't decide and assists". The American mentality is that the coach is a yes man, he gets paid $XXk to say 'yes! Nice guys'. From the first night, I said to myself 'watch out, red flag'. That was autimatic's vision, a vision that has evolved by the way, and I think he really regrets our departures with maLeK. In the beginning, he was in stewie's camp, like "let us do our shit, we won a major we know how to do"."

"EG had made it clear though that Damien would have the reins, carte blanche on player changes, establish his system, etc. Except that first day of pracc, we look at each other with maLeK and we are shocked. To make it simple, in terms of attitude, it looked like a FACEIT game. And we didn't understand why stewie doesn't give his deathcam, he doesn't give all the time his communication, he is in fun mode, he rages... maLeK likes discipline and good attitude, so we thought that we should put them on the right path. The very next morning, we had this discussion explaining that what we had seen was not right. And from there, it was already over."

"I was already wondering what we were doing there. But we didn't give up, it's our job to deal with problems. But the problem was that they weren't letting us handle them. When you have Stewie who has that aura, who we respect for what he's done, and that leadership, well who are the players going to follow? maLeK and EVY who have never won anything and that they don't know too much about or Stewie2k?"



"Stewie wouldn't say hello to Damien when we walked into the room, starting on day 5/6. When Damien spoke, he was turned back to his pc, not listening to him."

"Stewie wouldn't say hello to Damien when we walked into the room, starting on day 5/6. When Damien spoke, he was turned back to his pc, he wasn't listening to him. Sometimes Stewie would listen to Damien and then turn around and not respond. One of the worst things I've seen is denying tactical breaks. Damien calling tactical breaks and Stewie saying no. I've never seen that, and from the first official game. We looked at each other and we didn't understand."

"Every day we talked about it with each other, to find solutions, Damien had a plan and trusted the management above him, that things would change and that we had to preserve the team. Of course he was fed up with Stewie and if he could shake him up he would have, but that's not how you solve problems. If he does that, Stewie wins. I'm a little more emotional than Damien, so when Stewie disrespected me a couple of times in the beginning, I had a clenched fist, I resented the injustice. I learned, and I grew from that, that you can't fix everything right away. The guy, he thinks you're a piece of shit, that's just the way it is, I was able to prove to him the opposite, but I wanted to prove to him differently at first."



"We were looking like the bad guys trying to push Stewie around, when we were going right into the fucking wall."

"From there, Brehze was kind of neutral, Cerq was willing to follow, Tim was behind Stewie, RUSH was trying to make the connection. There were two groups and I saw some unspeakable things in terms of the captain's attitude. I'm not going to name them, but we're on the equivalent of FACEIT level 10 where someone giveup after round 2. It was very hard to live with. When you called them out, they had a well-honed reaction, gaslighting, like "I don't see how this is a big deal, I don't see how this is a problem". So we looked like the bad guys trying to push Stewie around, when we were going right into the fucking wall."

"At the Pro League, I'm the coach because Damien is absent. Nicole Lapointe, the EG CEO is there and in front of us. I'm standing behind them trying to motivate the team and I'll be honest, he doesn't even call anymore. In front of the president. And she sees that he's not calling anymore. If Stewie is still here, it's because contractually and financially speaking, there's something... I'm surprised Nicole didn't do anything about it."



"At the end of the RMR, after 3 months, the players come to us and say "Paolo, Stewie's attitude, it's not okay."... bro we've been telling you this since day 2!"

"Anecdote: Day 2, we say to ourselves that Stewie, his attitude, it's red flag and it's not okay. Damien, really brought up the subject very gently, I don't know how he managed not to lose it. Plus, he was in a very bad health situation. The majority of the players agreed that his attitude was not an issue."

"At the end of the RMR, the players came to us, it's been 3 months, and 3 months at EG is a very very long time... the players tell us 'Paolo, Stewie's attitude, it's not okay.'... bro we've been telling you that since day 2! So, from there, we created a meme with Damien, we were no longer coaches, we were gardeners, we planted seeds and watered them, and 3 months later the players had the same idea. But apparently it was already a meme in Stewie's old teams, where he would often say no, and 2 days later he would come back with the idea and say 'hey listen guys, this is a cool idea right?' That's what coaching staff is for, that's what we're about. All the warning lights were on, nobody listened to us, the plane crashed, see ya."



"Stewie, he gets up in the morning, he's like, 'I want to play this map, and I want to do that.' Bro, you can't operate like that, you have to take more perspective. What am I missing in my maps? Where do I want to go? What philosophy to institute?"

"As far as the American game and mentality goes, they watch demos, they learn about the current meta, they know how to make control maps, they know the principles of the game, some of them at least. The big differences with Europe are the following: the way they debrief and the attention they pay to certain rounds. Basically, the closer you get to the end of a round, the more chaotic it is and the more likely you are not to experience that exact situation again. Most of their debriefing is about the end of the round, like "I should have put my molo at that moment"... but bro, the next time you play this situation will be in 6 months! Tell me about your 3-2-1, tell me about your control map protocols, tell me about the principles of the game that you can relate to. There was a real problem with the methodology."

"Then there's the preparation. A player sees something fancy, he shows it, he has no idea what is or isn't in his playbook. You have 3 control maps, two stategies in B and that's it. It was something in a YOLO mode that they saw on a server, "I found this finish in A on overpass", they talk about it for 35 minutes without asking themselves if they actually need it. And all the praccs, you're playing teams that are attacking you mid-round and you can never do your finish, and the second thing is that your control map in A is questionable and you have no freeze. How do you want to finish?"



"And the last thing is the vision of how to guide a project. Stewie, he gets up in the morning, he's like, 'I want to play this map, and I want to do that.' Bro, you can't operate like that, you have to take more perspective. What am I missing in my maps? Where do I want to go? What philosophy to institute? etc. And especially if you are a captain, you don't have the global vision, you have your head in the game. That's where we come, I even made videos and documents where we had problems at the level of trade capacity, on certain mid-round phases that are too similar, on zone recoveries, such player does not understand that he should not give himself, etc."

"And every time we intervened, well when it was Damien, Stewie had a problem with him. I was lucky, Stewie thought that by being buddies with me, it would piss Damien off. So, during the Pro League without Damien, he was very open and involved me, but when I prepared an eco on Mirage and he calls it only once in practice... we don't iterate, we don't progress, we don't retain, we don't progress, because we don't do repetition... we lose time."

"The list of what is different is very long. The funniest thing was when I had to explain the trade capacity to them, I was trying to get them to understand the intent, the communication and the timing. Basically, Stewie he's wall on inferno banana, he wants to peek the sandbags, what does he do? He peeks sandbangs like a noob. NO! That's not how you play CS. When you have RUSH next to you, you talk to him 'let's peek sandbags, 3-2-1, go!' even on FACEIT some people do it... I have 20 gigs of Stewie's video not wanting to give his intention, peek and die. And RUSH comes in 3 seconds later, he doesn't know where to put his crosshair because the opponent has moved back. The foundation of CS."

"When I say 'like a noob', I'm just kidding, Stewie has put some nice clutch shots for us, etc. But he has a 0.55 rating against top 5 teams with EG, his level is questionable, he doesn't challenge himself as a player anymore and he's not a good leader, from there it's hard."



"maLeK had been right for six months, and when he stood up and asked EG to stop bullshitting him, it was over."

"When Damien was explaining the problems, sending out clips, and where any organization would have responded by asking for an explanation and talking about it directly... our supervisor was saying 'this is unacceptable, I'm going to do things.' Well, he didn't do anything. They were talking about plans to live in Europe all the time, etc. All kinds of projects. At the last moment, they made a switch and put obstacles in Damien's way. They had a plan to go on a bootcamp for two and a half months, not to play any official games and to come back in legend mode. It's good to be on a "submarine mode", but if you don't have any competition for two and a half months, how do you maintain the players' level of motivation? A lot of things were wrong and Damien lost it, and simply said 'stop, you are doing shit, do what I asked you to do, this is not normal, etc.'. He had been right for six months, and when he stood up and demanded that we stop bullshitting him, it was over."

"Damien benched himself and EG wanted to part with him. Me, I get up in the morning, and a buddy says 'bro, I hope it goes well for you'. I'm in bed, I don't understand... I open twitter and we're kick. I was always told, but I never believed it, that Americans were very hypocritical 'Very good job bro, very nice, omg you are insane, etc' and behind your back they stick a knife. Well, I got the proof. They promised us a lot of things, we only got positive feedback, but it was Team Stewie that won. When we get kicked, the players come to us, except for Stewie of course, to tell us that they didn't agree. Now, they're not going to shout it from the rooftops."

"The basic idea going forward was to part with Stewie, 1000%. In the end, it was maLeK or Stewie. We could have kept Stewie as a player, although he could have challenged the authority and made his star, but it could have worked. When the players had figured out the Stewie problem, if you don't make changes, who do you put in the lead? Will a Stewie trust autimatic or RUSH to lead? Is it worth a try? We were stuck no matter what. I'm not going to speak for the players but firing Stewie would have largely been a possibility, I don't know what happens since. If they perform with the current lineup, I'm quitting CS, that means I'm a clown. :D"