Earlier this year, Evil Geniuses' legendary StarCraft II division was unceremoniously disbanded by the team's new ownership. It was a somber moment for long-time fans of StarCraft II, who still remembered the Evil Geniuses that once embodied everything ambitious, grand, and extravagant about esports.

For fans of Team Liquid, the disbanding of Evil Geniuses had another meaning altogether. It signaled the end of a once glorious rivalry, and one that defined the formative years of StarCraft II. Finally, the rivalry had been won—but it had also been lost.

At IEM Katowice, I met up with Team Liquid's longest tenured player in Dario "TLO" Wünsch to contemplate some beers and indulge in the past.

*This interview has been edited and condensed.



Wax: Let’s start by talking about how you joined the Liquid side of the rivalry. How did you become aware of Liquid as a team?

TLO: I became aware of Liquid as a team in Brood War, already. I wasn’t super aware of Liquid as a team, but I had seen it in replays, I saw like Liquid`Nazgul[pG]. I discovered Team Liquid as a website around that same time, so around 2002, 2003-ish.

How did you end up joining TL?

About 2010, in March. I remember there was this End of the Beta tournament, and I was signed together with Jinro.

I was in a really good position because Matt [note: the creator of TheLittleAppFactory/ShinyThings, Liquid’s main sponsor for several years], who ended up sponsoring TL, was already paying me a salary basically, just personally. He knew me from Supreme Commander, the game I played before, and he was like “Oh I really like how you play and I want you to try to make it professionally.”

I got a lot of offers from teams, I’m going to pay you 100 Euro a month and you’re going to join X team—it was almost always year contracts for pretty small amounts. And Victor was like, “I would really like you to join Liquid but we can’t pay a salary yet, because we don’t have any money.” So then I was in a really good position because I could join the team that I liked a lot, that I felt had a lot of prestige and growth potential.

It wasn’t just purely love, I felt like Liquid out of all the teams that messaged me would be the team that could actually make something out of because it had TeamLiquid.net as the base of everything.

"There’s already this contrast. We still felt more like a clan, and they were more like an esports team."

When did you become first aware of Evil Geniuses?

I guess, I kind of heard about it in WarCraft 3. Wasn’t Grubby on EG at some point? I was a casual War3 player, I didn’t watch a whole lot of pro matches. I knew it existed as a team, but I didn’t really care about it.

When was the first time you started to have an opinion about EG?

I mean the thing is like, at the start of StarCraft 2 I had these weird ideals about how things should be, and EG immediately seemed like a sellout team.

The first time I met them was at MLGs, and MLGs and stuff were already way more sellout than anything I had seen before. We all show up in our Team Liquid shirts, the winged horse one? So it’s not really a uniform, it’s just the shirt that’s already being sold on TL.net to the community, so no sponsor patches, nothing. And I think EG already had this professional, sports style jersey with sponsors on it and everything. There’s already this contrast. We still felt more like a clan, and they were more like an esports team.

So when do you start getting the feeling that you’re good guys, and they’re the bad guys?

I think, first of all, it was maybe a little bit just like they have so many sponsors, and they’re gonna have to do all these commercials. But because they have so many sponsors they also have so much more money. You feel like the indie team, and automatically feel like you take the moral high ground just because of that, even if it’s complete bullshit.

We ran on passion, they ran on money.

A little bit of jealousy, too?

There could be some envy in it, I don’t mind admitting that. Even though I never felt that way— subconsciously, maybe. You think “it would be nice if our team had all that money and stuff.”

I think to some extent it’s just plain tribalism at some point, that over the years it just continues in the sense that you’re like… we start getting more sponsors, but we’re still more financed by Victor and starting to break even, but they’re making more and more profits. Then you hear about the salaries on EG’s side, and then I guess the final change where I was like these guys are REALLY evil was when they poached HuK.

Let’s talk about that...

That’s definitely when it became way more real. That’s when it became more personal than before.

That’s when it went from competition to business.

I remember because I was at the TL office when that happened as well. I was recovering from carpal tunnel, and Victor offered for me to stay and recover at the office and have everything taken care of.

HuK was the biggest star, he just beat IdrA at MLG Anaheim or whatever, where he beat him with hallucinations. I think it must have been around that time.

And I remember, I was actually in the room when Victor was negotiating with HuK online, and HuK was negotiating with Alex Garfield. And I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that HuK wanted to leave the team for EG. It made me really angry.

I was like “What? You don’t leave Team Liquid. And you don’t leave them for EG. It doesn’t make any sense. Even if you get paid way more, you don’t do that. What the hell?”

It changed my opinion of HuK. It was super strange seeing him in the EG uniform for the first time. I definitely think at the time that he did change as a person. He became—I don’t know how much I was projecting, you know? It’s a long time ago, and I’m not sure how much I’m projecting.

He became this villain very quickly to me, the first events I saw him as EG—it sounds so silly but it really felt like the guy going to the dark side. He has this pretty cool uniform now, with the sponsors, etc. He’s way more confident, he starts looking different, he has better results.

At the same time I’m like “Hmmm, this is quite attractive,” and it’s this thought at the back of my head I’m trying to push away (laughs).

"But I just didn’t want to lose to HuK, he betrayed us, and now I’m losing to him?"

And again, I was much younger then.

From nowadays perspective, I would still not judge it as harshly. I would still maybe not be too pleased about it, but in the end, everybody—it sounds really cold and really jaded—but in the end, you need to try and make as much money as possible from something like being a progamer, as quickly as possible.

Even in 2011, I lived together with HuK in Korea again. Right? So we had like a private house because I didn’t want to live in a Korean teamhouse again. It was just Supernova, HerO, Jinro, HuK and me. That’s not so long away from HuK being signed from EG, right? So probably not even a year later, I lived with Chris again. So I can’t say I was passionately disliking him for years.

There’s still like, some morals. I wouldn’t feel happy selling out to like a company I absolutely despise, just because they pay me a lot.

But I would never judge nowadays, even if StarCraft was much more popular with more money, I wouldn’t judge somebody for leaving TeamLiquid because he gets paid twice as much.

What was it like playing against HuK after that?

I know that whenever I played against HuK, I got emotionally way more invested than I should, and I played way worse every time I played him. Not only did I hate his playstyle because he was super cheesy, and no proper StarCraft player is ever gonna respect a cheese player as much as a macro player. But I just didn’t want to lose to HuK, he betrayed us, and now I’m losing to him? When I was in matches with him, I was not concentrating on the game at all, I was just thinking about all these emotions.

So it definitely was not… it definitely affected me emotionally, it bothered me when I was playing him. I wanted to defeat him so badly that I couldn’t defeat him. I wanted to show that he made a mistake, that he shouldn’t be on EG, etc.

I feel like the Team Liquid-Evil Geniuses rivalry was pretty unique in modern esports. Even outside the HuK signing, I think it’s the only case where one team was so clearly perceived as “good” and the other team was so clearly perceived as “bad.”

It’s a bit weird, because EG was also way more famous for fining players if they misbehaved. Because on TL it was like “Eh, try to behave well, but we’re not gonna do anything drastic to you.”

I don’t know if the EG fines were public. I don’t know any specific cases, but when players went over a certain line, if they got too insulting on Twitch, Twitter etc. So it‘s not like they have this bad boy image, but they were in like this cage where they have to follow the rules much more strictly than TL guys.

On the other hand, how much did the image of being good actually affect you?

Everybody in public is a caricature to an extent. But you always become the character you play. Like, it goes both ways. The character you play is an exaggerated version of yourself, but then that reflects back on your real self as well. You want to be that person that you’re representing in public because you’d be a hypocrite.

There have been so many moments where I started typing on Twitter or Reddit—I got so mad at a stupid comment, and I already had like three paragraphs written, and then I just deleted everything and didn’t post it. Because I don’t want to start a fight for no reason, and I know it’s not who people expect me to be.

"I think it’s very unique because there are other players who are nicer in real life and continue being assholes online, and I never forgave them the same way I could forgive Greg."

I feel like in traditional sports, the veil has kinda been lifted, where people realize these sports rivalries are kind of artificial constructs fans have made. What was it like for EG and TL?

I mean, in StarCraft in general, there’s very few people throughout the history of SC2—at least in the Western scene—who were actually rivals in real life. Almost everybody could hang out easily and have a good time. Maybe you didn’t like somebody in particular, but it was never like any toxic moments. Yeah, we could all hang out and have a good time. It sounds really boring, but there was like no big drama.

Everybody knew IdrA is super BM, etc. Online I thought he’s just a douchebag, and then you meet him in real life and he’s actually kinda funny—he’s still kinda edgy but, like I appreciated him as a person. Even though he’s still gonna keep insulting me online, probably… he’s like the one person that could continue BM’ing me online but I could still respect him a lot as a person and understand that this is just IdrA, and Greg is somebody different.

I think it’s very unique because there are other players who are nicer in real life and continue being assholes online, and I never forgave them the same way I could forgive Greg. It was just like you could easily separate IdrA and Greg—you just treat them as two completely separate entities. And Machine was super nice; iNcontrol a super nice guy.

I don’t think it’s that weird. It didn’t make it disingenuous. I still felt that on the meta level of SC2, the rivalry was real. It was just that we could separate our professional rivalry with our personal relationships with each other.

I still HATED losing to EG people, it was still a genuine feeling that as a player, I always wanted to beat EG, and they always wanted to beat us. Just because we can respect each other as people doesn’t make the rivalry fake.

Would you say the HuK signing was the peak of the rivalry? That moment until when?

I guess all the follow-up MLGs, and then there was like this team league?

The problem of the rivalry I felt was it was a bit wasted. Not just because of lack of team leagues, I just feel like relatively soon after that peak of HuK being on EG and stuff, I felt like EG declined pretty hard, and TL was pretty good.

That’s sorta true, but that’s because… TL signed the right Koreans.

But I mean, that’s how it is, right? I’m not gonna take credit for that, but TL was way better than EG. And then we had Jinro being amazing in GSL and stuff, and we started outshining EG on skill level. We had this rivalry but I wish they had been better.

But they sign Stephano in the fall of 2012.

So I feel the problem of our rivalry was that there was not a very long period of our teams being equal. Like they had Stephano who was just winning everything and beating everybody, and we couldn’t compete with that. And then we had HerO and TaeJa who could compete with that, but it was like “they have a foreigner, we have Koreans”... It was never equal terms, kind of?

It’s not like IdrA is now playing Jinro and I’m playing HuK, it wasn’t the same on that level. It still existed on the organizational level, but…

The problem is like… I don’t remember the timeline on these things exactly, but I felt like the peak rivalry was like when HuK was their most relevant player. And after that wasn’t the case anymore, it wasn’t the same.

It’s just a steady decline after the HuK signing. That was a spike, and it just declined over the years. There was some Twitter exchanges etc., but nothing that really ramped it up again.

"I felt like for a very long period, it was kind of sad how EG just didn’t seem to care anymore at all."

It’s weird. We all know that the HuK signing was when the rivalry peaked, but there’s no single moment that marks the decline of the rivalry. By the time Pizza.gg happens, it’s not really surprising that EG and TL are working together, and that Nazgul and Alex Garfield are on good terms.

The thing about Alex Garfield is that even though he was more of a corporate guy, you had to respect how much salary he actually fought for for his players. Like, his team had way more money, but it’s not like he took it all for himself. He actually tried to make the best deals possible for his players, and I think Victor respected that a lot.

And by the time we get to the EG-TL Proleague team, the rivalry REALLY just isn’t there anymore.

Eh, it’s like… it didn’t really bother me, I was just happy the guys had the opportunity to play in Proleague. It was cool, but it wasn’t like “oh it’s EG and TL, we shouldn’t be doing that.” I recognized it was the only possible way to do it, and that’s cool. And I hoped they would do well, and could compete with Koreans. I was happy for the opportunity, even if I didn’t play in it.

What did Evil Geniuses mean for esports and StarCraft?

It’s a weird thing, but TL might not be what it is nowadays without EG back then.

I think it was super important. I think it was both really good and really bad. I think bad, they really inflated some salaries, because they had way more money than anybody else, so because of negotiations, they made some of the player salaries too high, which hurt some teams. Which was nice for players, not gonna lie, amazing for players, but very difficult for some teams.

But they definitely put the spotlight on StarCraft—they helped StarCraft become bigger because EG was a big organization. It was a bit unfortunate because I felt, in the end, they had a very disgraceful SC2 exit, I felt. I don’t know the details of that myself, how that worked internally for them—I felt like for a very long period, it was kind of sad how EG just didn’t seem to care anymore at all.

Any final comments?

I think it’s just a bit sad. It would be nice if there was still a functional EG that doesn’t spend peak amount of money, but still be another SC2 organization that’s relatively big and just invests into SC and gets some players a good home. Just a stable name in SC2. I wish EG would still do that. But, it is what it is. In hindsight it’s funny, because it’s so sad that EG is not part of SC2 anymore.

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You can find Liquid`TLO and Wax on Twitter and tell them how they're killing StarCraft II by living in the past instead focusing on all of the people who are doing great work in the present.