The Smash World Tour is getting way tenser than expected, as you may know, last week the fan-made competition was cancelled after without any warning Nintendo informed the organizers they could no longer operate.
Funnily not long ago (November 2021) Panda Global and Nintendo announced their own licensed competing circuit Panda Cup, at first Nintendo assured the SWT organizers that their partnership with Panda was not exclusive and that they had not infringed on their IP regarding the game modifications and had represented Nintendo’s values well… so no problem, right?
Well, apparently Nintendo has stipulated that tournaments could only run with an official license, and while the Japanese company keep praising the event, the Panda Global team went around saying that the Smash World Tour was definitely getting shut down, making other organizers reluctant to participate in the tournament.
Everything went down
After the announcement, Nintendo gave a statement via Kotaku saying the following:
“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. 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.“
As expected, SWT’s organizers responded by sharing their side of the story: “we asked if we could continue running the Championships and the Tour next year without a license, and shift our focus to working with them in 2024. […] We asked if they understood the waves that would be made if we were forced to cancel, and Nintendo communicated that they were indeed aware.”
Statement after statement ended up exposing the malpractices of Panda Global which has reached the point where its CEO, Alan Bunney has resigned. A number of sources started rumours of Panda Global pressuring Nintendo to stop collaborating with other companies and events, such as the Smash World Tour, with Bunney behind all.
The company announced it via Twitter, confirming that the Panda Cup Final has been postponed due to "safety concerns for staff and contractors”.
— Panda (@PandaGlobal) December 5, 2022
The damage its done, and the main affected are not only the independent organizers who wanted to bring an event loved by the community but the community itself that is only seen as dollar bills.
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