All year long, Super Smash Bros. Professional Melee and Ultimate competed in events around the globe for a spot on the Smash World Tour Championship, where the top players were supposed to compete with $250,000 stakes.
But on November 29, a year of accumulation and hype collapsed. Smash World Tour organizers posted a post on Medium say Smash World Tour Championship 2022 and Smash World Tour 2023 events must be cancelled. As professional Smash player Ax told IGN, the event means a lot to the Smash community.
“So the Smash World Tour is almost like the Super Bowl of Smash tournaments,” Ax said. “[The finals were] is coming up next weekend, and a lot of players — myself included — have been planning to attend specific events throughout the year trying to earn enough points just to qualify for one event. this.”
The professional soccer player is not worried about the Super Bowl being canceled. In general, esports players also don’t have to worry about their events being cancelled. But if you’re a Super Smash Bros. As a professional, worrying about event cancellation is essentially a job requirement.
“I suppose there’s a kind of deep-seated, long-burning fear about Nintendo shutting down,” said Toph, a commentator and Smash Bros. player who has been around much of the professional Smash community. events. Nintendo’s long head-butting history.
Toph’s reservations are not unfounded, as there have been many instances where Smash players staged an event, only for Nintendo to send a “nasty letter” that brought the whole thing to a halt. The infamous Nintendo pull Smash Melee from EVO 2013 just a few days before the tournament. But public outrage led Nintendo to withdraw the ban a few hours later.
More recently, the the company canceled a tournament during the peak of the pandemic in 2020 as players attempt to maintain their events using online mods for Melee — a game that doesn’t have a legal online mode.
The latest casualty in the battle between professional Smash players and Nintendo is the Smash World Tour — and the cancellation is troubling the community.
‘The Super Bowl’ of Smash Bros. Competition.
The Smash World Tour is designed to give the Melee and Ultimate communities an annual tournament round to compete in. Various affiliate events throughout the year are worth points that qualify for the Tour’s championship event at the end of the year. The tour gives a sense of continuity and importance to each event in the calendar.
But points, ranks, and levels quickly lose meaning as the event the player is aiming for disappears. SWT organizers said they received notice from Nintendo in late November that they would no longer be allowed to operate. Smash World Tour is an unlicensed event – which basically means it doesn’t have Nintendo’s stamp of approval. The organizers of the Smash World Tour appear to have worked with Nintendo to win licenses throughout 2022, but Nintendo has never issued them.
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“Things seem to be pretty good throughout the year, besides [Nintendo] take a long time to reply to receive [SWT] officially licensed, but a Nintendo rep said it was fine to work even without a license… it’s happened many times before and everything sounded fine,” Ax said. will turn it off,’ you know?”
Official Nintendo statement said “their decision is based solely on our assessment of the proposals submitted by SWT and our assessment of their unlicensed activities.” Nintendo added, “Any partners we license to must meet the high standards we demand with regard to the health and safety of our fans.” However, much of the Smash community believes that something else is going on behind the scenes.
SWT organizers accuse Panda of playing unfairly
In 2021, Nintendo licensed and entered into an official partnership with Panda Global for Super Smash Bros. First Circuit Officially Licensed. A series of tournaments throughout this year led up to the Panda Cup Finals, originally scheduled for December 16-18. But the Smash World Tour article is filled with accusations aimed at Panda, and specifically Panda’s CEO, Dr. Alan Bunney.
“There was a long talk behind the scenes that basically all the major tournament organizers were very upset with Panda and especially CEO Allen for behaving this way,” Toph said. .
The Smash World Tour allegations allege that Bunney pressured specific tournament organizers throughout the community to participate in the Panda Circuit or face the consequences of being cancelled.
Players from all over the community have blamed the cancellation of the Smash World Tour especially on Panda and Bunney. Many in the community believed that Panda didn’t want a competitive Smash circuit, prompting them to leverage its relationship with Nintendo to shut down the Smash World Tour.
“And obviously as a community, all we have is each other. So if there’s some bad guy that says, ‘Hey, I’m the bully now and that’s going to be the way’ mine or the highway’, the way our communities operate, obviously we can’t survive if that happens,” Toph said.
This makes famous Panda players like Plup – who actually won the Smash World Tour championship for Melee in 2021 – leave Panda completely. many more staff at panda has also announced their departure on Twitter, and the players announced their intention to withdraw from the Panda Cup Finals.
I’m ditching pandas.
I really enjoyed my time there, and they treated me very well.
I know that, at some point, they are always in the best interests of the community. I just don’t think I can support them anymore.Now I have to sleep for 1000 years to prepare for the next tournament
— Plus (@Plup_Club) December 3, 2022
“So I decided not to go to the Panda Cup finale,” Ax said. “They invited me… They’re going to take me there, I’m going to play at the weekend. I know there’s a lot of money, but I can’t… I don’t feel good about it.”
Finally, Panda revealed that Bunney was removed from the role of CEO, and the Panda Cup Finals were postponed. Bunney makes her own statement about Medium on December 6, refuted claims that he and his company wanted to end the Smash World Tour. Bunney also said he has faced “extreme harassment, death threats and being forced to flee his home due to doxxing” since announcing the cancellation of the Smash World Tour.
Immediately after Bunney’s announcement was made, the SWT organizers released other statement said they were “deeply disappointed by Bunney’s lax statements aimed at us”. SWT also wrote that they do not “tolerate any harassment or doxxing of anyone” and expect better from the Smash community. Popular players from the Smash community took to Twitter to protest some parts of Bunney’s lengthy post.
As for Nintendo, the company released a statement said that canceling the 2022 finals was the choice of the Smash World Tour organizers themselves, with a part stating, “When we informed SWT that we would not be licensing the 2022 activities or 2023, we have also verbally informed them that we are not asking them to cancel the 2022 finals event because of its impact on players.Therefore the decision to cancel SWT. 2022 was and still is their own choice.”
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Nintendo also said it is open to providing licenses for major tournaments outside of the Panda Cup. And, earlier this year, Nintendo told IGN it wanted to see the grassroots community thrive.
Toph said he doesn’t necessarily think the SWT situation will make unlicensed events impossible in the future, which just stings right now.
“I just think it’s been difficult because what we could have was we were able to have something really beautiful. And I think that’s unfortunate, the way things have turned out. , it turned out in the worst possible way.”
The delisting of SWT takes a toll on the Smash . community
It’s been a messy situation, with SWT, Nintendo, Panda, and Bunney all voicing their opinions — and the Smash community largely supportive of the Smash World Tour organizers. But when you go through all the official statements and allegations, one core truth of this whole situation is that the cancellation of the Smash World Tour is having a huge impact on the Smash community.
“This time, especially with the Smash World Tour, I can say it was the worst I’ve ever felt in any event,” Ax said. “Just because people have been planning this for a whole year, not just in the US but all over the world. It’s like having people from all different countries from everywhere, planning this, and it’s done. canceled at the last minute , hit really hard Like I’d say this is probably the worst feeling [cancellation] in Smash history, if you ask me.”
Another player from another country was Ferps. He is one of the top Ultimate players in Brazil and wants to be the top player in the world. In pursuit of that goal, the Smash World Tour is a great way for him to test his mettle against some of the strongest players outside of Brazil.
“I love this game so much, for example, I don’t care how long it takes me to become the best player in the world. I’m going to be the best player in the world and I’m extremely dedicated to the game. hey,” Feps said. “So [SWT] is super, super life changing for me because I don’t have the same kind of… Opportunity like [players in] Mexico, America or Japan all have it.”
Ferps is on a seven-game winning streak in Brazil and is working towards the Smash World Tour championship. But the road to the top became significantly more difficult for Ferps after the event was cancelled.
“And when the news came out, I was sad… Because it was nothing,” Ferps said. “There’s a lot of money to travel and I don’t have a fight scene in my area, so I also have to travel within Brazil and Brazil is huge. So there’s that and… I’m really sad.”
Stories like these can be seen all over the Smash community right now. Zain – considered one of the top players in the world – tweeted that the cancellation of the Smash World Tour had taken a toll on his mental health and that he was rethinking his relationship with game.
But the competitive landscape of Smash Bros. almost died before that — and the players we talked to weren’t worried about Smash coming to an end.
“I mean, I wish things could have turned out differently, but this isn’t going to stop Smash players from playing Smash. We’ve been around for 20 years… We’ll do it longer. more of that.”
For now, Smash players are heading for an uncertain 2023. With the Smash World Tour not on the calendar, the players we spoke to weren’t sure what events would and wouldn’t happen. But even with an uncertain schedule, one thing is certain: these players will continue to play.
“So there’s nothing anyone can do, at least I don’t believe, that can make me stop playing the game,” Ax said. “I’m a Smash Bros. Melee player, and I love Melee, and I’ll never stop playing it. It’s just me and I just wanted to share how great the game is with everyone. That’s the thing. I’ve always wanted to do and I won’t let anyone stop me… It’s just what I want to do.”
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN on video games and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the games industry with sub-lines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.
