Over the past two weeks, the hashtag #FixUltimateOnline has been trending among the “Super Smash Brothers Ultimate” twitter community in response to the current state of Nintendo’s online servers. Riddled with connection problems, disconnection issues and a plethora of matchmaking issues, Nintendo’s online servers for many of their multiple games have been met with criticism by fans, comparing the online state of games like “Super Smash Brothers” to other online competitive games like “Street Fighter V”. Many players in the community frustrations stem from Nintendo’s lack of a response towards adjusting the state of their online, an issue that has not been addressed until recently by Nintendo. The backlash from the community also triggered responses from professional “Super Smash Brothers Ultimate” players as they joined the community to express their disappointment for the problematic Nintendo servers that are preventing larger-scale online tournaments from running smoothly.
The trend also caught the attention of professional “Super Smash Brothers Ultimate” players, as they joined the community to voice their disapproval and disappointment of the state of Nintendo’s online servers. The servers, unlike that of other popular online esports like “League of Legends” or “Call of Duty”, are based on peer-to-peer connections that often causes connection issues and massive lag between players. The connection issues create a difficult environment for competitive play, and large-scale tournaments with over 5,000 entrants can cause further issues for the servers that players are competing on. This, along with numerous bugs and balance issues with online competition, have lead to the vocal support of the entire “Super Smash Brothers” Twitter community, as they rally and hope for change. The
On May 9th, Nintendo released a statement saying that in a future update for the Switch they will be adding more features and making changes to make the online experience more enjoyable. Despite the announcement, the community is still hesitant to accept that Nintendo will be fixing many of the core issues that started the Twitter trend, but the community still hopes for big changes with Nintendo’s next online update.