The Smash World Tour has announced that both the upcoming championship tournament and the 2023 Smash World Tour have been canceled after Nintendo demanded the event organizers cease operations “without any warning.”
Nintendo shuts down Smash World Tour ‘without any warning’
Tournament organizers say it will be ‘losing hundreds of thousands of dollars due to Nintendo’s actions.’
Tournament organizers say it will be ‘losing hundreds of thousands of dollars due to Nintendo’s actions.’
is a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.
As reported by Kotaku, the third-party event was one of the largest fighting game competitions in the esports scene. “In 2022 alone, we connected over 6,400 live events worldwide, with over 325,000 in-person entrants, making the Smash World Tour (SWT, or the Tour) the largest esports tour in history, for any game title,” said Smash World Tour in a statement addressing the shutdown. “The Championships would also have had the largest prize pool in Smash history at over $250,000.”
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The championship was due to take place between December 9th and 11th, with tournament organizers receiving notice of the shutdown the night before Thanksgiving — despite Nintendo having allegedly offered the event a licensing agreement in November last year. The offer came just after the Japanese gaming giant announced the Panda Cup, its only officially licensed tournament circuit for Super Smash Bros. in partnership with esports brand Panda.
Nintendo “made it clear that Panda’s partnership was not exclusive”
“They made it clear that Panda’s partnership was not exclusive, and they said it had ‘not gone unnoticed’ that we had not infringed on their IP regarding game modifications and had represented Nintendo’s values well,” says the open letter from SWT, which claims “Nintendo was being consistently straightforward, transparent, and direct” in answering the team’s questions at that time.
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