Cloud9 acquires BLAST Premier spot as Evil Geniuses exits CS2 Evil GeniusesCloud9 has acquired Evil Geniuses\u2019 Counter-Strike 2 BLAST Premier slot as the latter slowly exits esports as a whole. As the Counter-Strike world celebrates Team Vitality\u2019s trophy lift at the BLAST Premier World Finals against FaZe Clan, starting a promising rivalry between the teams in CS2 to end off 2023, EG has quietly sold their BLAST Premier slot. It was announced right before the BLAST Premier World Finals\u2019 conclusion that Cloud9 has bought out EG\u2019s slot after a lengthy bidding process. Cloud9 has had a long history in CS, historically fielding North American rosters, and even winning the region\u2019s first and only CSGO major in 2018. However, after taking a brief hiatus from the game in 2021, they came back with a European roster after acquiring Gambit Esports\u2019 CSGO roster in 2022. With this new European roster, Cloud9 has had promising results, winning a trophy in 2022 at IEM Dallas, and ending top 4 at IEM Rio 2023, although, they missed the BLAST Paris Major. Evil Geniuses sells BLAST Premier slot to Cloud9 amid esports exit However, this acquisition also marks EG\u2019s slow exit from esports, as the org removes itself from its various slots as it crumbles internally. \u201cSince its inaugural season, Evil Geniuses has supported and participated in BLAST Premier as part of our commitment to the NA Counter-Strike scene,\u201d writes Chris DeAppolonio, CEO of EG in a press release. \u201cWhile we will no longer participate in Premier going forward, we are thankful for the three years we competed and look forward to supporting NA Counter-Strike talent within the league from afar.\u201d EG\u2019s exit from esports started when they exited LCS amid reports of their mistreatment of their star players. And further reports came as their Champions-winning Valorant roster found themselves in contract jail. This also follows as EG scrapped their CS project, \u201cThe Blueprint\u201d, after acquiring multiple NA CS rosters, abandoning the failed roster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cloud9 acquires BLAST Premier spot as Evil Geniuses exits CS2 Evil GeniusesCloud9 has acquired Evil Geniuses\u2019 Counter-Strike 2 BLAST Premier slot as the latter slowly exits esports as a whole. As the Counter-Strike world celebrates Team Vitality\u2019s trophy lift at the BLAST Premier World Finals against FaZe Clan, starting a promising rivalry between the teams […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}