Smash World Tour
The Smash World Tour was an annual Super Smash Bros. tournament circuit operating all around the world, but based in the United States. It took place three consecutive years from 2020 to 2022, although only the 2021 edition was completed fully, and mostly consisted of a series of tournaments aiming to determine a number of players qualifying for the Smash World Championships, major singles tournaments for both Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate; the Championships themselves acted as the culmination of the tour, with the crowning of world champions for both games.
The inaugural 2020 edition of the tournament was announced on March 1, 2020; however the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of all offline Super Smash Bros. tournaments, and therefore the premature end of the tournament mid-March. It returned the following year, successfully completing, and returned once again in 2022. The 2021 Championship's prize pool of a combined $150,000 remains one of the highest prize pools for any event in Super Smash Bros. history, and the 2022 Championship's prize pool of $250,000 was set to be the highest in history. In total, the 2022 Smash World Tour included over 6,400 offline tournaments and featured over 325,000 players, making it the largest tour in the history of esports.
On November 29, 2022, less than two weeks before the 2022 Smash World Championships, SWT organizers announced the abrupt cancellation of both the 2022 Championships and the 2023 Smash World Tour, claiming to have been forced to shut down both by Super Smash Bros. publisher Nintendo. As part of their statement, they also accused Alan Bunney, the CEO and owner of Panda, another esports organization, of severe misconduct against the community, including efforts to sabotage the Smash World Tour in favor of the Panda Cup, a competing circuit organized by Panda which, unlike the SWT, was officially licensed by Nintendo. The announcement caused a major controversy in the competitive Super Smash Bros. community, and resulted in near-universal condemnation against both Nintendo, which denied some of the accusations and did not address the others, and Panda, which denied all accusations safe from one occurrence of misconduct from Bunney. Following further backslash, which saw a wave of resignations from Panda employees and many top players deciding to boycott the upcoming Panda Cup Finale, Panda announced the resignation of Bunney as CEO and the postponement of the Panda Cup Finale.
History
2020
The Smash World Tour was created by siblings Calvin "GimR" Lofton and Matthew "Aposl" Lofton, founders of the longstanding Super Smash Bros. tournament organization VGBootCamp, and Justin Wykowski, a producer for Super Smash Con. After announcement, Calvin said that the Smash World Tour was "the next step to push Smash toward a tier one esport", and making the game more profitable for tournament organizers and competitors. While the tour was partnered with Twitch and the fighting game website start.gg, it had not waited to partner with Nintendo, which The Washington Post deemed to have "mired past attempts" at creating prominent Super Smash Bros. circuits; however, the organizers were having active discussions with Nintendo—Wykowski said that the team's "goal was to go ahead and create something that then to Nintendo as an opportunity to be able to work with the Smash community directly".However, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic led the Smash World Tour to cancel all of its major events for March and April 2020 mid-March, and eventually all events for the rest of the year; only two relatively small tournaments took place before the cancellation, the 86-entrants Don't Stomp On Me and the 39-entrants SoCal The Hype, both on March 14, 2020.
2021
The 2021 edition of the tour was announced on February 20, 2021. Once again, the circuit partnered with Twitch, but not with Nintendo. The originally planned prize pool for both games combined was $210,000, the highest prize pool in Super Smash Bros. history; the prize pool for the Championships alone was $150,000, making it the largest prize pool for a single event in Super Smash Bros. history: the prize pool was $75,000 for each game.As part of the 2021 tour, 19 events specifically created for the tour took place, including 11 "Qualifiers", Ultimate-exclusive online open tournaments, six "Regional Finals", 16-players invitational featuring selected players for Melee, and players who qualified via the Qualifier tournaments for Ultimate. The final two events were the Last Chance Qualifier event to determine the final entrants of the Smash World Championship, the circuit's final event. The switch from the original system making independent tournaments part of the tour via a point system to a series of events dedicated solely to the circuit where offline tournaments would have a limited number of players, took place in order to make the event possible in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, although the organizers hoped to resume using the 2020 format the following year.
The pandemic still caused a number of issues: both Oceania Regional Finals were cancelled, with Australian players Sora and Jdizzle selected as Oceania representatives for Melee and Ultimate respectively due to being ranked #1 in Australia for their respective games. Due to the state of the pandemic in South America, the Ultimate Regional Finals in the region where held online, while Melees were cancelled entirely, with a panel directly selecting Chilean players Chape and HP to represent the region at the Championship. The East Asia Regional Finals, which took place in Japan and were meant to feature players who had qualified via either the Japan Qualifier and East Asia South Qualifier, encountered significant issues as none of the qualified East Asia South players were able to travel to Japan for it. As such, Hong Kong player XIFL, who had taken first place in the East Asia South Qualifiers, directly qualified for the Championship, and the number of qualifying Championship spots for the now all-Japanese East Asia Regional Finals was reduced from 6 to 5.
The 2021 Smash World Tour culminated with the Smash World Championships on December 17–19, 2021, featuring 40 players in both the Melee and Ultimate tournaments. American player Plup became the inaugural Melee world champion, and Mexican player MkLeo becoming the inaugural Ultimate world champion.
2022
The 2022 edition of the Smash World Tour was announced on March 9, 2022. It marked the return of the original planned 2022 format, using a point system applicable to many tournaments part of the tour and working with the Smash World Tour, but unlike tournaments part of the 2021 tour, not organized directly by them. The organizers once again partnered with Twitch, with new partner online coaching platform Metafy. The prize pool for the Smash World Championship at the end of the tour was $250,000, beating the previous year's $150,000 record for biggest event prize pool in Super Smash Bros. history. Platinum and Gold events, the highest tier ratings for the tour, took place in countries whose Super Smash Bros. scenes usually receive little attention internationally, such as Brazil, Cuba, Qatar, and South Korea.The tour officially started with Virtuocity Smash Open 2022, a Gold-tier tournament taking place on March 17–19, 2022 in Doha, Qatar, although several tournaments dating as early as March 12 were retroactively recognized as Silver-tier events. In total, the 2022 Smash World Tour included over 6,400 offline tournaments, and featured over 325,000 players. The completion of the gold-tier tournament Apex 2022 on November 20, 2022, the final event of the tour before the Last Chance Qualifiers and Championships, marked the end of the points ranking competition, and the confirmation of the 30 qualified players for each game ; American player Hungrybox topped the ranks for Melee, while MkLeo topped the ranks for Ultimate.
Cancellation
On November 29, 2022, less than two weeks before the Championships were scheduled to begin, the organizers of the Smash World Tour announced that both the Melee and Ultimate Championships had been cancelled, prematurely ending the Smash World Tour 2022, as well as announcing that the circuit would not return in 2023. In their statement, they claimed to have had multiple conversations with Nintendo regarding an official license for the Smash World Tour, and that Nintendo appeared supportive, though a license had not been granted before the 2022 circuit had begun. They claimed that on November 23, Nintendo had informed them that a license would not be granted for either the 2022 Championships or the 2023 circuit, and that Nintendo had told them that the lack of a license meant the events were not allowed to operate. Smash World Tour accused Alan Bunney, then-CEO of the esports organization Panda, of encouraging tournament organizers to join the Panda Cup—an officially licensed circuit run by Panda—rather than the Smash World Tour, and using his partnership with Nintendo to threaten others with a cease and desist order should they not comply. Smash World Tour further stated that Bunney attempted to seize broadcasting rights from the organization Beyond the Summit, which was corroborated by David "LD" Gorman, the organization's co-founder.After a request for comment from Kotaku, Nintendo responded, saying they "were unable to come to an agreement" with the Smash World Tour for a license in 2023, though Nintendo "did not request any changes to or cancellation of remaining events in 2022, including the 2022 Championships event, considering the negative impact on the players who were already planning to participate". Smash World Tour disputed this, saying that Nintendo had confirmed that the 2022 Championships and 2023 circuit were not to proceed, and that Nintendo acknowledged all potential impacts of the cancellation, including "some positive, some negative, and some really negative". According to Smash World Tour, Nintendo claimed that a license be granted "well in advance" of a public announcement in order for commercial events to be operated featuring Nintendo's intellectual property, and that the Smash World Tour had failed both health and safety guidelines and "internal partner guidelines", meaning Nintendo would be unable to grant a license for any upcoming Smash World Tour activity. In a second statement to IGN on December 2, Nintendo said that they "let know verbally that not requiring they cancel the 2022 finals event", as well as reaffirming their commitment to Panda as a partner. Smash World Tour stated that the timeline of Nintendo's actions were illogical if they intended to allow the Championships proceed.
The same day, Panda published a statement denying their involvement in the cancellation of the Championships. They also denied most of the accusations against Bunney, though they acknowledged that the dispute between him and Beyond the Summit did occur, and that he "spoke in a manner that did not reflect either guidance from Nintendo or our own standards". After a wave of internal resignations and a growing number of players boycotting the Panda Cup Finale, Panda announced on December 5 that Bunney was no longer CEO, and that the Finale had been postponed "due to security concerns". Bunney claimed on the next day that he had resigned "to protect the safety and wellbeing of the team", and that he would release a statement in the future with evidence that Smash World Tour's statement was untruthful and Beyond the Summit's leadership "put the community in jeopardy".