It’s the end of an era for Evil Geniuses’ Dota 2 team.
The organization announced the benching of longtime midlaner Syed “SumaiL” Hassan. This ends an almost five-year stretch where he has been a starter for the team. Evil Geniuses is also parting with Gustav “s4” Magnusson.
“It is prudent to discuss our departures. S4…and SumaiL Hassan will remain under contract and be open to transfer talks,” Evil Geniuses said in a statement. “Both have earned an incredible amount of respect and appreciation here at EG for their results and the effort they’ve put into the team; they are top-flight talents, and we’re confident that they will find themselves surrounded by capable teammates.”
SumaiL was famously recruited into EG in 2015 by at-the-time offlaner Saahil “UNiVeRsE” Arora. At just 16 years old, he helped the team win The International 2015 and became the youngest player in esports history to exceed over $1 million in prize pool earnings.
As time went on, SumaiL became Evil Geniuses’ top star, sticking with the team through multiple roster shuffles and helping the team enjoy elite status fairly consistently throughout the last four seasons.
S4’s time with the team is considerably shorter by comparison, but was quite successful. The Swedish offlaner joined the team late in its tumultuous 2017-2018 season alongside OG teammate Tal “Fly” Aizik. The pair’s addition was a controversial one, as it left OG with a gutted roster before The International 2018. But it paid off for all involved parties, with s4 and Fly helping Evil Geniuses reach third place at the event, while OG went on to win it.
They stuck with EG in the 2018-2019 Dota Pro Circuit season and enjoyed generally positive results, coming in third place at the Kuala Lumpur Major, Chongqing Major, and MDL Disneyland Paris Major.
S4 and SumaiL leave on a somewhat sour note in the form of a 5th-6th-place finish at The International 2019. But even by the highest standards, EG’s season was a good one.
Confirming that both players are out of the picture with the team, Evil Geniuses announced that Abed Azel “Abed” L. Yusop will be joining as the new mid laner while Roman “RAMZES666” Kushnarev joins as offlaner.
Abed first rose to prominence in 2016 as the mid player for Execration. From there he moved to the North American scene by partnering up with Team Onyx, but returned back to southeast Asia the following season with Fnatic. He has been a rock solid player throughout that time, but has suffered mixed results with somewhat inconsistent teams.
RAMZES666 is a surprise addition on multiple levels. The Russian has long been one of the top stars of Virtus.pro and was not confirmed to have left the team before this. He departs the team alongside Pavel “9pasha” Khvastunov, who transitioned to Natus Vincere.
In addition to changing from the CIS to North America region, RAMZES666 also goes from a carry role to offlaner. Artour “Arteezy” Babaev is currently listed as EG’s primary carry.
Rounding out Evil Geniuses’ lineup are returning supports Fly and Andreas “Cr1t-” Nielsen.
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