While the situation of Evil Geniuses in the competitive scene of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is worrying, now they have the added rejection of much of the community to know they were directly invited to IEM Dallas 2023.
Fans do not agree with this invitation to the North American team, claiming that it is a tournament where only the best should be, and right now, EG is not one of them.
ESL strongly criticized for inviting EG to IEM Dallas
On Monday afternoon, ESL officially shared which teams are directly invited to IEM Dallas 2023, which has a prize pool of $250,000. To the surprise of many CS:GO community members, the North American team Evil Geniuses is on the list.
YOUR #IEM DALLAS 2023 INVITED TEAMS! 🇺🇸🦅@heroicgg @TeamLiquidCS @G2esports @FURIA @ENCE @Complexity
Outsiders@FaZeClan @mousesports @EGCSGO
TBA 👀5 teams from the regional closed qualifiers will also be joining them! pic.twitter.com/0SvH2FnyU7
— ESL Counter-Strike (@ESLCS) February 27, 2023
Evil Geniuses is one of the teams at the highest competitive level of CS:GO that has had a start to the season to forget. The team has a current record of five wins and 13 losses so far in 2023, and most of these five wins have come against lower-level North American teams. But, of course, we’re talking about teams like Demon Time, REIGN, and Mythic, which Evil Geniuses faced in the open qualifiers for the first CS:GO Major of the year and failed to qualify.
In the image posted by ESL in their Tweet, they point out that EG is the “Local Hero Invite,” to which a Reddit community member said:
“Local hero invite wtf”
While another immediately responded:
“More like local failure lol.”
Just like these comments, there are thousands on the Reddit thread where ESL also posted the announcement of the invited teams.
On the other hand, on Twitter, the thread is also on fire, where one user said:
“That invite for @EGCSGO is a joke. Oh well another tournament they will finish dead last. Will be amazing to see all the threads and Tweets.”
That invite for @EGCSGO is a joke. Oh well another tournament they will finish dead last. Will be amazing to see all the threads and Tweets.
— Foreign_gam3r (@ForeignGam3r) February 27, 2023
While others don’t say their name, we all know what he’s referring to.
I think everyone knows what team I'm referring to with this picture pic.twitter.com/HN2tOE5qpP
— Nikebones (@NikebonesLive) February 27, 2023
EG has no community support at this time
There is no doubt that Evil Geniuses has lost all the support it had from most of the community.
Evil Geniuses is one of the organizations that is partnering with ESL on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. On the other hand, EG is ranked 25th in the ESL world ranking. However, results have not been with this organization at the start of 2023, as they finished in last place in Group A of the ESL Pro League S17 after being crushed by Cloud9, Eternal Fire, and IHC.
The fact is not that they lost all their matches and finished in last place because any team can have a bad tournament. There is no doubt about that. But the level of play they have shown has been deficient, and, likely, this will not change unless the team makes a 180° change in the next few weeks.
The IEM Dallas 2023, announced by ESL, will be played from May 29 to June 4. This leaves EG plenty of time to rectify this situation, put together a competitive team, and get to shut up their mouths in a tournament played on their home turf.
Header: Evil Geniuses