RAMZES666 benched by Evil Geniuses, is Virtus.pro return possible?

After weeks of silence and inactivity, Evil Geniuses is finally making major changes.

The organization has announced the deactivation of off laner Roman "RAMZES666" Kushnarev from its Dota 2 roster. No announcement was made regarding his replacement, or whether other changes are set to take place for Evil Geniuses.

With the removal of RAMZES666, Evil Geniuses has the following Dota 2 players signed:

• Tal “Fly” Aizik
• Artour “Arteezy” Babaev
• Andreas Franck "Cr1t-" Nielsen
• Abed Azel L. Yusop

RAMZES666 joined Evil Geniuses following The International 2019, leaving his longtime home in Virtus.pro after a shockingly disappointing performance at the event. He transitioned from playing carry to offlaning for the team, and performed reasonably well in that new role.

Unfortunately, the global health situation proved to be a brutal blow for Evil Geniuses. RAMZES666 was isolated from the team after Dota Summit 12 in March, and didn’t play with Evil Geniuses again until August in Omega League. This prevented him from ever truly establishing himself with Evil Geniuses, and it will unfortunately remain a mystery as to how good the team could have been in a normal season.

RAMZES666 rumored to join SumaiL in VP, but is it true?

Earlier this month, rumors swirled that Virtus.pro was set to rebuild much of its five-time major-winning roster from 2017 to 2019 while adding former OG and Evil Geniuses star Syed “SumaiL” Hassan. RAMZES666 leaving Evil Geniuses suggests this may be true, but there are some serious questions about this now.

Virtus.pro recently announced that the roster of VP.Prodigy had been promoted to represent the main Virtus.pro brand in Dota 2. This makes it unclear whether Virtus.pro would be interested in signing a new team that would likely be both expensive and worthy of competing in top events.

While fielding multiple teams is something Virtus.pro has done recently, neither Valve nor most tournament organizers are open to letting multiple teams from the same organization compete together.

This may mean that the team is set to compete in a different organization, or it could mean plans have changed. RAMZES666 is not a free agent and is currently on Evil Geniuses’ bench. Evil Geniuses was very slow to transfer SumaiL to OG after he was benched by the team in 2019, which could mean RAMZES666 is left in limbo for an extended period of time.

Regardless, expect Evil Geniuses to announce a new off laner, and possibly other roster moves, in the very near future.