NRG has officially built itself a VALORANT juggernaut. As it stood, they already had a solid team after retaining Crashies, Victor, and Marved. Now, they’ve added Ethan and Demon1 from the VALORANT Champions-winning Evil Geniuses squad, which is breaking up after severe executive mismanagement is rocking the organization.
Ethan and Demon1 were alleged to be in “contract jail” by multiple esports insiders. Essentially, EG was reportedly turning down fair buyout offers for their players, leaving them in limbo as the 2024 season rapidly approached. To make matters worse for the players, the VALORANT vertical might be EG’s last esports holding, and it looks like they’re trying to sell everything humanly possible.
Evil Geniuses’ loss is NRG’s gain. They already had a solid core lined up, with multiple players from the old, dominant OpTic roster signed to their team. With the addition of North American VALORANT‘s brightest young star (Demon1) and one of its most successful veterans (Ethan), NRG is looking like the team to beat in the 2024 Americas league.
In 2023, NRG and EG were neck-and-neck for most of the year, when the Americas region is indexed for North American majority teams only. NRG finished second in league play to EG’s third, and both were beaten out for first by LOUD. At Masters Tokyo, NRG exited in fourth place, while EG went to the grand finals. At Champions, however, NRG failed to make it out of the group stage, falling to Bilibili Gaming twice. EG would go on to win the whole event.
With arguably the most important parts of NRG and EG combined onto one roster, the Americas league looks ripe for the taking. NRG has the pedigree and the skill to continue NA’s winning ways at the upper echelons of VALORANT esports.
