Riot Games Denies Forcing G2 Esports CEO to Resign

G2 Esports Carlos "Ocelote" Rodriguez’s association with controversial social media figure Andrew Tate and the subsequent defense of his actions led to immediate community backlash. G2 Esports apologized to the fans and ended up suspending Rodriguez for a period of eight weeks. However, the damage was already done, G2 Esports failed to secure a slot in Riot Games' Valorant partnership program for both EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) and NA (North America). Eventually, Rodriguez announced that he would be stepping down as CEO of the esports organisation and selling his shares.

Esportmaníacos host Yuste "Inyustificado" Armero said that Riot had blacklisted Rodriguez during his segment on the Spanish esports show. He said an insider reportedly confirmed that Riot Games had informed G2 of the esports owner's blacklisting. The subsequent stepping down and selling of ownership was reportedly done in order to keep their LEC (League of Legends European Championship) spot. Riot came out with a clarification stating that the LEC has not forced the G2 CEO to resign from nor divest his ownership in the organisation and nor had Riot Games.

Riot Clarifies Stand on G2 Esports CEO Stepping Down

Head of Esports for League of Legends in EMEA, Maximilian Peter Schmidt took to Twitter following rumours that the publisher had asked Carlos Rodriguez to step down as G2 CEO and sell his shares in the company. He said that, “the LEC has not requested Carlos to resign from G2 nor divest his ownership”. When a Twitter user said that it was not the LEC but Riot Games who had demanded he step down, Schmidt answered with an unequivocal “No”. However, he did state in his original tweet that they have, “opened an investigation last week per our LEC rules, which is still ongoing”.

Rodriguez’s actions have cost not only G2 Esports heavily, but related organisations like XSET.

Multiple reports stated that G2 Esports would be getting a slot in VCT 2023 for NA before the Andrew Tate incident. G2 had expressed an interest in acquiring the XSET squad if the NA team did not make it into the Americas league. Since G2 failed to acquire a slot for VCT 2023, XSET players talked about how Carlos Rodriguez had cost them a spot.