Nintendo and its strict strong-arm tactics against tournaments of any shape or form for Smash Bros are well documented. While Super Smash Bros quite possibly has some of the biggest player bases for any fighting game out there, Nintendo is very privy about organisers hosting tournaments.
With Ultimate skipping this year’s EVO 2022, it seems the major Smash tournament of this year will also shut its door. Smash World Tour, scheduled to host its annual championships on December 9 to 11, is officially cancelled.
The tournament touted a prize pool of $250,000 and points towards Nintendo for the cancellation reason. It does not end there, as the organisers blame rival TO Panda Global for this.
A statement posted by the organisers on Twitter claims that regardless of having conversations with the Japanese console maker about receiving a license to host the tournament, the company suddenly halted the tournament.
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“Without any warning, we received notice the night before Thanksgiving from Nintendo that we could no longer operate. This was especially shocking given our discourse with Nintendo the past twelve months,” the statement read.
The upcoming Smash World Tour Championships and the entirety of the 2023 Smash World Tour must be cancelled.
Full Story: https://t.co/3ro3q7rr4h pic.twitter.com/Gcgcgakdvp
— Smash World Tour 2022 (@SmashWorldTour) November 29, 2022
The statement also points fingers towards Panda Global since they currently hold license from the company for hosting official tournaments. They accuse the CEO and co-founder of sabotaging the event.
“We specifically held off announcing 2022’s Smash World Tour at (the 2021 Championships), per the request of Nintendo. The aim was to get licensed before our 2022 Tour was announced and kicked off in March.
“During that period of December to March, we continued our talks with Nintendo. For the first time, we felt like Nintendo was being consistently straightforward, transparent, and direct in answering our questions. We also began finalizing details of the 2022 Smash World Tour with various tournament organizers around the world, this time with more confidence than ever.
“However, we quickly found that many organizers were concerned about joining up in 2022. They told us that they had been told by Alan, the CEO and co-founder of Panda, that we were going to get shut down and were not coming back in 2022.”
With the current situation, the Panda Global licensed circuit for Smash Bros in North America is the only viable option.
