Twitch bans former Dota 2 pro Mason for “accidentally” using homophobic slur

Twitch fans are divided over a controversial incident that saw Mason, a former professional Dota 2 player, get banned for “accidentally” saying a homophobic slur while streaming.

Mason “mason” Venne has been a household name in the North American professional Dota 2 scene for a long time now. He’s best known for his brief stint with Evil Geniuses that saw them finish third in The International 2014.

He hasn’t played professionally since 2019. Instead, he’s been primarily streaming on Twitch and has developed a strong following with more than 150,000 followers and 1,500 active subscribers.

In that time, he’s already been banned from the platform three times.

The first one was due to pervasive racism in his chat, while the reasons for his second and third ban were less clear.

Now, he’s been banned again for the fourth time, but this time it’s for something a little more controversial than the others; it appears he may have — “accidentally,” he claims — said something that mainly believe was a homophobic slur.

The alleged slip-up happened when he was criticizing a teammate’s item choice on a hero. He started things off by saying, “I think the Aghs is a pretty terrible choice.” 

For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s the nickname given to Aghanim’s Scepter, an item that enhances hero abilities and sometimes adds a new one.

He supposedly tried to follow it up by saying he was “never a fan of the Aghs” on that specific hero. But instead, he muddled the words ‘fan’ and ‘Aghs’ and said something completely different. It also happened to sound a lot like a homophobic slur.

• Read More: Invictus Gaming wins Dota 2 Singapore Major 2021

Mason immediately realized what happened and tried to clear it up. “Oh my god! I didn’t mean to say that word… I think I just said the F word… I didn’t mean to say that.” However, that didn’t stop him from getting slapped with a ban.

Mason wrote about the situation on social media. He doubled down on his claim that it was an accident and confirmed he would appeal the ban.

• Read More: xQc freaks out after being unbanned from NoPixel GTA RP server

If he isn’t successful, he’ll be unable to stream for seven days, which is the same duration he served on his third ban.