Nintendo’s tense relationship with the competitive Super Smash Brothers scene comes to a head with the sudden cancellation of Smash World Tour, weeks before the tournament was set to begin. The fallout from the decision has reignited frustration and hatred towards the gaming company from fans, who have been notorious for snubbing the competitive scene in Smash for years. Yesterday, SWT released an open letter announcing the unfortunate situation to the public and their frustrations with the company’s decision. 

“It is with an unbelievably heavy heart that we must announce that both the upcoming Smash World Tour Championships, as well as the 2023 Smash World Tour must be canceled,” said Smash World Tour. “Without any warning, we received notice the night before Thanksgiving from Nintendo that we could no longer operate…Since then, we have been working around the clock to take the proper steps logistically, as well as to prepare this statement with proper legal guidance.”

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

SWT began as a group of competitive Smash bros fans completely unaffiliated and unlicensed with Nintendo. They eventually amassed an enormous viewer base and connections across the world for their tournaments, so much so that Nintendo themselves officially reached out to start a partnership through officially licensing the event. For many, this seemed like a positive turning point in the tense relationship between competitive smash players and Nintendo.

According to SWT’s statement, attempts at receiving a license from Nintendo were riddled with months of delays. Since the initial filing of the proposal in March 2022, SWT claimed it took till November for Nintendo to respond all the while the organization kept an open line of communication. It was claimed that Panda Global, organizers of Panda Cup, undermined the approval of the proposal by speaking in bad faith about the event throughout the entire approval process, adding to Nintendo’s reluctance in letting the event go through. 

SWT expressed their frustrations towards Nintendo’s lack of transparency and the lengths Panda Global went to allegedly eliminate competition. SWR expressed that they did not want to burn bridges between themselves and Nintendo, rather they would be happy if Nintendo reconsidered its decision.

“This truly is an open letter: we genuinely are unsure of how much Nintendo is aware, and we are hoping that they will reconsider their approach to the grassroots community,” said SWT. “We all love this community SO much, and have tried to represent Nintendo well as we share that love with millions of fans worldwide.”

Following their statement, Nintendo responded at the request of Kotaku.

“Unfortunately after continuous conversations with Smash World Tour, and after giving the same deep consideration we apply to any potential partner, we were unable to come to an agreement with SWT for a full circuit in 2023,” said Nintendo. “Nintendo did not request any changes to or cancellation of remaining events in 2022, including the 2022 Championship event, considering the negative impact on the players who were already planning to participate.”

SWT quickly followed up in dispute to Nintendo’s statement.

“…To be clear, we did not even submit an application for 2023 yet, the license application was for the 2022 Championships (submitted in April),” said SWT. “Nintendo including all 2023 activity was an addition we were not even expecting. In our call that accompanied the statement, we asked multiple times if we would be able to continue to operate without a license as we had in years past with the same “unofficial” understanding with Nintendo. We were told point blank that those “times are over.” They followed up the call with their statement in writing, again confirming both the 2022 Championships and all 2023 activity were in the exact same boat.”

Visit Medium to view SWT’s original statement and the tweet below for their full follow-up statement.

A short follow-up regarding Nintendo’s response:https://t.co/YxzmNjDqT0

— Smash World Tour 2022 (@SmashWorldTour) November 30, 2022