Mason apparently kicked from Evil Geniuses, carry slot now open
Through a post on NaDota.com, Mason 'Mason' Venne announced his official departure from Evil Geniuses. He was apparently kicked form the squad by the rest of the members for various reasons, and he currently has no plans to join another team.
An impressive season ends with sad news for Evil Geniuses, as one of their members has been kicked from the team despite the team's solid performance at The International 4. We are talking about Mason 'Mason' Venne, their former main carry, who replaced Clinton 'Fear' Loomis in February after an injury of the latter.
According to Venne, his teammates held a meeting without him only hours after the conclusion of The International 4 and decided to show him the door for several reasons. He believes that the decision was not justified, as he played very well in the competition and had the will to train more with the team. However, after his departure from Evil Geniuses, he no longer aims to continue playing professionally unless a really good opportunity emerges.
With Mason out of the team, the team is left without a position-one carry. The obvious replacement for him would be Fear, granted that he has fully recovered from his health issues and is capable of returning to full-time practice once again. It should be reminded that Fear's abrupt replacement came right after the team's first place finish at Monster Invitational. With Mason, Evil Geniuses managed to win over $1,100,000 in prize money, shattering every possible record in the club's long history.
You can read Mason's statement here. EDIT - As of 4.30 CEST, the post has been deleted from the site.
Hey so I planned on releasing a big blog (still intend to, just later) detailing my entire Dota "career", from nobody, to pubstar, to professional; however, I still have a lot of fine tuning, editing, and some entries still needed to be added to it. Basically, it's a little bit ways away from being finished. Also I'm going to be MIA for several days and I don't plan to work on it then. There is something that I want to get off my chest/remove some of the mystery regarding my tweet about possibly being done with pro Dota. So I'll just hop right into it.
The day after the afterparty (Tuesday) my team held a meeting without me, and I was unaware of it for a while (someone I knew knocked on their door and said they were having a meeting in my room while I was chilling with some other people). There they discussed some things about the future of the team, as well as my future with them. In shorthand, I was kicked from the team. After the meeting I asked PPD why, and he gave me a bunch of reasons. I asked Artour the morning after, a bunch of reasons. I won't say the reasons because that's the teams business and I don't want to say something that could affect negatively them in the future. I told them I'd be down to play more (at the time I hardly played pubs at all) and kind of plead my case, but unfortunately it was a unanimous decision and I don't want to play with people who don't want to play with me. I thought I performed pretty well at every tournament minus Dreamleague (my attitude and mindset that tournament was as poor as it has ever been). Infact, at TI, I feel like I played the 2nd best on the team. But play isn't the only thing that leads to decisions like these I suppose. Anyways yeah, I've been removed from the team. I would've enjoyed to continue to play with them but it looks like it's not meant to be. So now that I'm off EG, what's next for me? Like I said in multiple interviews, I only want to play with people I enjoy and people who are good enough to be a legit contender at every tournament they attend. Frankly, I don't see any 4 group of players like that at the moment.
So for now, I'll go back to my stomping grounds. Inhouses, stacking, and pubbing. I've been pubbing a lot recently, played like 10 games in the last 24 hours, maybe I'll continue that. I've been winning every game though so if I lose a couple in a row I'll probably take a break or something. It's kind of sad. I felt like I could've been great. Like I think I played well, but I don't think I played as good as I'm capable of. I think the break would've given me time to reassess things and come back better than ever.
While I'm upset with my teammates, I'm also grateful. The last 2 months (I guess 5?) have been pretty fun and I would definitely do it all over again. The money is nice but that's not what I played for. I would like to give a couple shoutouts to the people behind the scenes (kind of). Aside from my teammates, I also met Fear, Charlie (Monolith), Conrad (QuantumPope), and Alex. Charlie and Conrad especially made everything smooth as fuck for me and put up with us and did the most ridiculous shit just to ensure we'd be happy and set for whatever. Props to them for putting up with a bunch of whiny people who get way too much for what they do. Also they're just incredibly nice and hard working people. I wish them and my teammates the best in the future, although I'm still kind of mad at them, I do understand and they'll continue to do well in Dota. I'm sure of it. EG is a good organization basically.
So TLDR of a not very long post: I've been kicked from EG. I am mad but also grateful. EG is a good organization. I have no intentions of playing Dota professionally but if I meet the right group of people that could definitely change. Also, I'll miss all the awesome people I met at the events. See ya."
Headline image by ESL One.
Author
Andreas "drouks" StThere's really not much to say about Andreas 'drouks' Stavridakis, except that he sleeps two hours a day, plays the guitar and survives solely on Diet Coke. He also writes about DotA sometimes.
