Smash World Tour, the largest Smash Bros. tournament in history, suddenly announced its cancellation a week before the final. An official statement explaining the circumstances of the continued troubles is also available.

The official Twitter account (@SmashWorldTour) of the Smash World Tour ( SWT), the largest unofficial Smash Bros. Championships" and "SWT 2023," which will be held from Friday, December 9 to Sunday, December 11, 2022 (U.S. time). The news is so sudden that the Smash Bros. eSports scene is in shock.

Smash World Tour, the largest eSports tour in history.

SWT 2022 is a circuit-style tournament in which the top players who earn points in SWT-sanctioned tournaments around the world from Saturday, March 12 to Sunday, November 20, 2022 (U.S. time) will be invited to participate in the final tournament starting Friday, December 9, 2022. Although announced in March 2020, the event was canceled due to the new coronavirus and was partially online in 2021.

Smash Bros. players around the world rejoiced at the long-awaited full format for SWT 2022, with more than 6,400 live events and 325,000 participants worldwide in 2022 alone. The total prize pool for the 2022 finals, the SWT Championships, was over $250,000, and the fact that SWT 2023 was scheduled to have a prize pool of over $350,000 is indicative of the excitement!

SWT Announces Sudden Cancellation

SWT's official Twitter account (@SmashWorldTour) made a shocking announcement at 7:51 a.m. on Wednesday, November 30, 2022 (Japan time). They announced the cancellation of the SWT Championships and SWT 2023.

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The final tournament, which would be the culmination of the players' eight months of competition, and the SWT 2023, which was to be held on an even larger scale, were suddenly cancelled. The SWT is over 17,000 words long, over 3,500 words, explaining the circumstances of why this happened. The full text in English can be found on Medium (@smashworldtour).

How it all began

We feared SWT would close when Panda Cup and Nintendo signed a partnership agreement in November 2021. Surprisingly, however, Nintendo made it clear that the partnership with Panda was not exclusive and wanted to know if SWT would seek a license. We were quite confident going into the SWT 2021 finals, but given the history of Nintendo and the community, we could not just take them at their word. And we refrained from announcing SWT 2022 on the spot at Nintendo's request.

Toward the licensing of SWT 2022

We continued our discussions with Nintendo with the aim of obtaining the license by March, when the SWT 2022 tour would begin. In the process, we felt for the first time that Nintendo was consistently and transparently answering our questions, and we felt more confident than ever in finalizing with the various tournament organizers around the world. However, we soon discovered that many convention organizers had concerns about our participation in SWT 2022. They told us that "Alan, CEO and co-founder of Panda, told us that SWT 2022 would not take place because SWT would be closed. Of course, there was no such talk between us and Nintendo, but we felt that we should keep our conversation with Nintendo private until a formal licensing agreement was in place, so we were unable to explain this to the convention organizers. When we brought this to Nintendo's attention, they reassured us once again that there would be no unauthorized SWT, that Panda's CEO does not represent Nintendo, and that the license with Panda is not exclusive. We were again impressed with the potential of not only SWT, but also Nintendo's approach and relationship with the community and, working with Nintendo, submitted our license application in late January 2022.

Licensing was not completed in time to start the tour.

The response from Nintendo was surprisingly slow, and they suggested that we focus our license application on one final tournament in December. We are going to have to coordinate with SWT Championships and SWT Championships and SWT Championships. We decided to take a longer time to resume our activities for the SWT Championships and SWT 2023 license application. At the same time, Panda Cup was actively recruiting events for the circuit, and the CEO added the condition that "events participating in Panda Cup would not be allowed to participate in SWT. To our surprise, this rule was lifted around April 2022. Even more surprising was the fact that Nintendo licenses were issued for several of the Panda Cup events shortly after the announcement.

To be Canceled.

From the announcement of the Panda Cup in May 2022, Nintendo's communication slowed dramatically. We were cooperative, as we did not want to be seen as "those who presented without a license," but on the evening of Wednesday, November 23, 2022, a Nintendo representative told us, "We would like to give you the news that we will not be granting licenses for future SWT Championships or SWT 2023 activities. We asked for clarification as to why. We asked if they could clarify the reason for this, but they could not give us any specifics and it seemed as if Nintendo did not want SWT to continue. Finally, we asked if we could continue without the license in 2023 and shift to a cooperative relationship with Nintendo starting in 2024, but we were told that "those days are over. Nintendo "understands" the impact of having to cancel the event.

Celebrities and professional players also responded

Yoshinori Ono, who was the executive producer of the Street Fighter V series during his time at Capcom and is currently the president of LassenGuru Corporation, and MkLeo, the world's strongest Super Smash Brothers SPECIAL player and a member of T 1 player MkLeo, who is also known as the world's strongest player in Super Smash Bros.

It is still fresh in our minds that Crazy Raccoon (@crazyraccoon406) and ZETA DIVISION (@zetadivision) established Smash Bros. divisions in Japan in July 2022 and September 2022, respectively.

While some of the information is mixed due to the shock, no announcement from Panda or Nintendo of America has been confirmed at this time. SWT has apologized to all parties involved and will be in contact with staff and attendees regarding refunds, changes to travel arrangements, etc., but the impact has been devastating and will not abate for some time to come. What will happen to the SWT and, by extension, the Smash Bros. competition scene in the future? First, we await the reactions from the organizations and companies involved.