The Super Smash Bros. eSport Community, one that has not seen much love from Nintendo ironically in this age, received an unexpected but yet another blow from Nintendo and seems that this is one for the increasing lack of faith of the japanese veteran.
Organizers of Smash World Tour have announced that the tournament, scheduled for December 9 until December 11 will not go ahead.
The $250,000 Super Smash Bros. Tournament apparently was banned by Nintendo, who reportedly backed out at the last minute of the tournament and enforced their IP ownership as a reason to also NOT authorize the tournament.
Smash World Tour directive have claimed that despite having productive conversations with Nintendo about receiving an ongoing license to host Smash Bros tournaments, Nintendo suddenly stated that the Smash World Tour could no longer go ahead and apparently no reason was shared and they became aware by Thanksgiving weekend and an abruptly 12 month relationship just ended.
The organizers blamed Panda Global, another entity and apparently still authorized by Nintendo to run Super Smash Bros. Tournaments, as part of a campaign to have them being blacklisted by Nintendo as they took the entitlement to “foresee” Smash World losing their license since a year ago and accused them for more attempts to deter other organizers from hosting events to finally being blindsided after a constant silence from Nintendo and a misleading of what was to be originally allowed.
In other worlds, probably Panda Global convinced Nintendo in some way that having multiple license was bad for business and of course, Nintendo being unfriendly with esport at all complied and not the first time that they actually don’t care on negative reaction if it fits on their vision “to protect their IPs”.
As of the writing of this, neither Nintendo or Panda Global have reacted to the statement or acknowledge the general negative reaction from the gaming community.
The sudden shutdown of the event will mean a lot of money in loss that Smash World Tour will have to face that includes promotions, deals and sponsorship that will not go through.
Via Smash World Tour