Envy Gaming leaves esports and merges with OpTic Gaming

Envy Gaming, the esports organization that existed for almost 15 years, has disappeared as a brand after a merger with OpTic Gaming. On June 27, the President of OpTic Gaming Hector “H3CZ” Rodriguez and the Founder of Envy Gaming Mike Rufail shared on The Eavesdrop Podcast their plans and discussed the outcome of their cooperation along with the eventual end for Envy as an esports brand.

The companies have been cooperating since 2021, which affected Envy Gaming from top to bottom. First, Envy merged their Call of Duty squad named Dallas Empire with their rivals OpTic Chicago and later transformed it to OpTic Texas. OpTic also obtained Envy’s Valorant team, however other squads stayed under the Envy Gaming brand until recently. 

Reasons for switching to OpTic 

H3CZ shared that they tried to maintain dual-branding for some time, however, they understand that it can’t last forever. The management decided that it’s better to leave Envy Gaming behind and exert all efforts on the OpTic brand. Both brands are honored in the community, that’s why founders had to consider all the factors of promoting two clubs at once as opposed to choosing one, and ultimately choose between them.

The move generally makes sense from the business perspective as it is can be hard and energy-consuming to maintain two major brands along with a bunch of esports teams. Of course, fans will be undoubtedly missing the original Envy brand that they followed for almost 15 years, but they can stick to OpTic, which is more recognizable nowadays. 

Mike Rufail, the Co-Founder of Envy Gaming commented on the merger: 

“While this merger makes a lot of sense in terms of the overall business of the thing, it’s a sudden and somewhat unexpected change. Going forward, OpTic Gaming will now field top teams in the Call of Duty League, Overwatch League, Rocket League, Halo, Valorant, and Apex Legends.

With such a reach, the only way is for OpTic Gaming – farewell, Envy.”

Following the announcement, the organization’s team in Rocket League also rebranded into OpTic favour, thus there are no representatives left under the Envy tag. Only Dallas Fuel in Overwatch will keep their branding, however, they don’t even resemble Envy.

The changes also impacted content creators who represented the brand such as Botez Sisters and Justaminx, who also switched to represent H3CZ’s company. With all that being done, all things “will go greener now” as Envy disappears as an esports brand. 

Header credit: OpTic Gaming, Envy Gaming