#panda cup

I fucking love my job.

Because of a lot of miscommunication between tournament organizers, Alan (the Panda CEO), and Nintendo a lot of people blamed Alan for Smash World Tour's cancellation. This incited a lot of harassment on Panda as a whole and to mitigate that harassment Alan stepped down as CEO and left the company. Alan was marked as the evil man who cancelled tournaments for his own greed.

Alan has since shared his side of the story in full with both a written response and a Q&A on a podcast. Not going into details, but it turns out Alan is not the evil greedy man people made him out to be and he's not the reason why Smash World Tour got cancelled.

Wanna know who to blame? Nintendo.

Nitnendo is the sole reason why Smash World Tour was cancelled.

Wanna know who to blame for Panda Cup's cancellation?

Y'all

Any smash fan that harassed Panda employees including Alan as well as anyone spreading misinformation that Alan was entirely at fault even though Alan cannot control Nintendo's decisions.

Following Panda Global's first statement made regarding the controversy surrounding the Smash World Tour's cancellation and behind-the-scenes operations, over 80% Panda's players and commentators from Smash and the wider fighting game community appear to have resigned from the team so far.

At the time of reporting, top Melee competitors Cody "iBDW" Schwab and Justin "Plup" McGrath as well as Chris "WaDi" Boston, Ryan "Saint Cola" Collins, Zak "Coney" Zeeks, Terrence "TKbreezy" Kershaw, Marine and Victoria "VikkiKitty" Perez have all publicly stated their resignations or intentions to do so.

[...]

This exodus from the company has already dropped Panda's roster of on-screen talent confirmed by more than half with others including Justin Wong, Victor "Punk" Woodley, Keenan "Kizzie Kay" Kizzie, Eduardo "HookGangGod" Deno and Little Z removing mentions of Panda from their Twitter pages — although they've yet to make a formal announcement yet.

The monumental response comes in the aftermath of the Smash World Tour announcing the 2022 championships and entire 2023 season would need to be canceled after Nintendo denied their licensing agreement.

Organizers for the SWT accused Panda and its CEO Alan Bunney of improper conduct in their attempts to recruit major tournaments for their own Panda Cup, which is officially licensed by Nintendo.

Panda's response to the allegations came 3 days later, but did little to quell the backlash from the Smash community and beyond. [...]

Many other top players who aren't sponsored by Panda have announced their intentions to no longer attend the Panda Cup Finale including Liquid|Hungrybox, CLG|SFAT, Tempo|Axe, LG|Maister, Liquid|Dabuz, BC|Magi, Furia|Fatality, GG|Zain, VGBC|aMSa, C9|Mang0, Fiction, GG|n0ne, Wizzrobe, T1|MkLeo, CG|Medz, Pipsqueak, FLY|KoDoRiN, LUM|Ginger and CG|Eddy Mexico.

The Panda Cup Finale has not been canceled and is still scheduled to take place December 16–18 currently, although you generally need to have players to put on a tournament.

Similarly, this leaves the future of the Panda eSports organization in grave peril as well, considering their talent roster outside of the FGC currently consists of only 1 chess player according to their website.

To try and make up for the Smash World Tour 2022 Championships' cancelation, popular streamer Ludwig has announced his intention to host "The Scuffed World Tour" on December 18 with invitations to the top 8 SWT competitors in Smash Ultimate and Melee to help raise money for VGBC and players. 

Nintendo and Panda have both released statements: they're both empty PR statements intended to appease casual viewers while saying "deal with it" to people actually in the scene

Nintendo's statement can be seen here (in this utterly uncritical IGN article)

they deny technically shutting down the Smash World Tour 2022 finale; instead, Nintendo

told SWT that unlicensed tournaments would be shut down

told SWT they would not be receiving a license

so, “we didn't tell you to cancel SWT! we just communicated that we will shut you down if you do try to run it :)”

the only real information here is that they're continuing to back Panda

you can see SWT's response here (via twitter), but again, not really anything to Respond to in the first place

Panda's statement, released shortly after Nintendo's:

They vaguely and briefly allude to how they threatened/harassed BTS (“an interaction between Dr. Alan and Beyond the Summit”) without actually acknowledging the substance of what they did, and while denying that they routinely made the same threats and harassment toward TOs to bully them out of SWT and into Panda Cup

VGBC, BTS, SWT, and many individual TOs, commentators, etc. and others involved in the scene have corroborated each other's accounts. there's no magical twist where Panda or Nintendo actually behaved themselves: even those most cautious about withholding judgment until hearing Panda's/Nintendo's sides are now on board

so, Panda and Nintendo are taking the approach of

(1) nominal empty statements to appease casual viewers who only see headlines and don't pay any attention

(2) force and threats of legal action toward the scene itself, betting that despite their outrage, the Smash scene will eventually just resign itself to Panda having a monopoly on licensed tournaments

the thing is, I don't think (2) will work out for them. everyone is furious with Panda and Nintendo: they are not going to play ball, they are not going to cooperate, they would rather not have major tournaments than just have majors in the Panda Cup. players are openly stating that they will not attend Panda events. Panda's employees and sponsored Smash players had no idea about Panda's actions, and now that they know, they are openly posting about resigning

competitive Smash as "professional", monetized ventures is barely viable in the first place (even more so than esports in general, which is largely a bubble tbh.) the only way it works at all is because of large amounts of unpaid labor by volunteers who really just want the satisfaction of seeing Smash events happen, at great personal effort and expense. Tournaments have thin margins. Even sponsored players who stream often and Do Content are not making huge bucks (with a few notable exceptions)—the majority of top players are not making a Living off of Smash, and most TOs aren't either. the only way "professional" Smash is profitable is with a huge amount of both good will and unpaid labor. Panda Cup will likely fail—even with those players and contractors who are locked in to contracts for upcoming Panda events, those events are likely going to be disasters, and any future events even more so

of course, Nintendo will be fine with Panda Cup failing and competitive Smash being pushed underground: the loss is negligible, and the end result of squashing professionalized Smash competitions (pushing the scene underground, without sponsorships, playing whack-a-mole with streams of locals and regionals, etc.) is worth it to them.

Panda won't be fine. Panda has burned all of their bridges, their employees and sponsored players are openly posting about looking for new jobs, and the entire scene is discussing ways to boycott, sabotage, Maliciously Comply, etc. with Panda events, as well as discussing alternatives for the scene to pursue in a new era of aggression against Unlicensed Majors: e.g. “if Nintendo threatens a stream of a Smash event, turn the stream into discussion-only, no gameplay footage, and keep running the tourney off-air: everyone keeps the stream open for viewership numbers”

btw, since Nintendo is coming after the Melee and Ultimate scenes anyway, this is a great time for Melee and Ult fans to come together with people who play mods of Smash games. suppressing PM/P+ and other modded games won't keep Nintendo from coming after you, and playing with Unfrozen Stadium sucks anyway

The upcoming Smash World Tour Championships and the entirety of the 2023 Smash World Tour must be cancelled.

Full Story:

[...] The truth is, what makes this all even more disappointing is the approach Nintendo took in recent weeks compared to our discourse with them over the past twelve months. We truly believed things were progressing positively for quite some time.We had kept all of this progress quiet, but especially in light of both Nintendo’s and their partner Panda’s actions this year, we wanted to take the opportunity to write an “open letter” to Nintendo, as we don’t know how much the higher ups at Nintendo are even aware of the history and context of the last few years. In recent months, we have requested multiple times to communicate with them directly, but these requests were not granted.

As a preface, we want to emphasize that there are some great people working at Nintendo who have been advocating for the Smash community and the Smash World Tour, even if that was not reflected in Nintendo’s recent actions. Likewise, we have nothing but the utmost respect for Panda’s team, players, ambassadors, employees, and contractors — many of which are our friends and are truly incredible people and, to our understanding, had little to zero knowledge of the damage Panda caused behind-the-scenes in the past year. [...]

However, we quickly found that many organizers were concerned about joining up in 2022. They told us that they had been told by Alan, the CEO and co-founder of Panda, that we were going to get shut down and were not coming back in 2022. [...] Nintendo was very sympathetic to our situation, and reassured us on a few counts: [...]

Unfortunately, the attempts from Panda to undermine the Smash World Tour did not stop, as the CEO continued to tell organizers we were definitely not coming back in 2022, and if we did, we’d get shut down shortly after announcement.

Furthermore, organizers were told that their individual events would also be at risk if they were on the Smash World Tour. A few organizers told us this directly as the primary reason that they did not participate in the Tour this year, which we completely understood. We did not want organizers to feel like it would add any risk to be on the Smash World Tour, even if we believed that behind-the-scenes everything was okay based on what Nintendo had told us directly. [...]

PANDA CUP

Around this same time, Panda Cup began heavily recruiting events for their circuit. The CEO [of Panda] continued to tell organizers we would be getting shut down shortly, and also added that any events that participated in the Panda Cup would not be allowed to be on the Smash World Tour. This exclusivity surprised us, not only because of our Nintendo conversations regarding “co-existing”, but also because we were not exclusive, and even back in January, we told organizers that they could be on both with zero issues from us.

At first, Panda targeted events that were not on the Smash World Tour (including those who did not join because of the aforementioned warnings). A few of these events had broadcast deals with a popular tournament broadcaster, Beyond the Summit (BTS). The CEO of Panda wanted broadcasting rights to be included as part of the deal of the events joining the Panda Cup. Most of the events refused to break their contracts, so Panda approached Beyond the Summit directly to try to get the rights released.

BTS had very little motivation to give up the broadcast rights for free, so they declined to get involved, causing the CEO of Panda to escalate things quickly. We were told he made a variety of threats to Beyond the Summit, including shutting down their entire Smash operation in 2023 if they did not eventually join Panda Cup. After BTS held firm, the CEO of Panda warned that they would get Nintendo directly involved, putting broadcast rights for all tournaments in jeopardy. [...]

At this point, Panda Cup was not left with many events for their circuit. However, at some point in April, the exclusivity “rule” changed and events became eligible to be on both the Smash World Tour and the Panda Cup. Additionally, multiple events were then issued Nintendo licenses very quickly, after the events were publicly announced. This caught us by surprise because we were repeatedly told by Nintendo that this “was not possible.” All of these instances were a great demonstration of the “rules for thee, but not for me” umbrella we felt we were under.

The Panda Cup was finally announced on May 26th, 2022. Our communications slowed down dramatically with Nintendo, since at this point all we were waiting for were the next steps regarding our December Championships and beginning talks for the 2023 Smash World Tour. Nintendo was very slow to respond to our many bumps, even though they were aware that we submitted in early April with the intention of announcing the event in July, giving more than enough time for a decision or a discussion on next steps using the timeframes they provided to us. We continued to push back the announcement for the Championships in the hopes that following Nintendo’s directives would help our relationship in planning for 2023.

After no response for months, we felt that we had no choice but to announce the Championships in August. Nintendo finally responded and mentioned another event that had their team incredibly busy, which is why there were delays. [...]

THE SHUTDOWN

We were not able to reconvene with Nintendo again until November, nearly seven months after our application submission. At this point we were only one month out from the Championships [...]

Finally, last Wednesday evening (November 23rd), we had our most recent call with Nintendo. Our Nintendo rep opened by letting us know that they are being asked to deliver the news that going forward, Nintendo expects us to only operate with a commercial license, and that we would not be granted one for the upcoming Championships, or any activity in 2023. We received this in writing as well.

We asked if they could clarify the reasoning for their decision. Initially, Nintendo gave us a reason that seemed to be misinformed, and when we pushed back to ask for more details, Nintendo said they were unable to give any specifics and had to speak in generalities moving forward. This was very frustrating given everything we had been told all year regarding accessibility and transparency in requirements. It felt as though Nintendo simply did not want the Smash World Tour to continue to exist. At this point, we now felt we had been strung along this entire time.

As a last ditch effort, 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 alluded to how the last year functioned in that capacity, with a mutual understanding that we would not get shut down and focus on the future. We were told directly that those times were now over. This was the final nail in the coffin given our very particular relationship with Nintendo. This is when we realized it truly was all being shut down for real. 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.

(29th November 2022; bolding emphasis mine)

I'm also going to attach this reply from Fizzi (the main developer of Slippi) because I think it's accurate:

Our best recourse as a community, in my opinion, is to boycott any Panda cup event and additionally any event associated with Nintendo. This includes TOs, players, commentators, everybody.

After the Big House cancellation, my impression is that Panda has effectively served as an in-community trojan horse allowing Nintendo to start exercising its control over our events again.

For clarity since some people seem to be misunderstanding: I'm not suggesting people boycott Panda sponsored players. I'm suggesting players don't attend Panda event. I understand many people affiliated with Panda had no control or knowledge of this. I have nothing against any of the Panda players.

almost everybody who is involved in or follows competitive Smash is aware that Nintendo sucks and has done an incredible amount of work to stifle, harass, and threaten everyone who organizes the scene