The year might not be officially over for the Super Smash Bros. community yet, but its last Major is now in the books as Ludwig’s Scuffed World Tour crowned aMSa and Sparg0 as champions. But the event wasn’t just about seeing the top players in the world clash for one last time this year, it was also about supporting a grassroots tournament organizer that went through a rough patch.
The entire reason Mogul Moves and Ludwig needed to host such a last-minute invitational is thanks to the Smash World Tour being suddenly canceled at the end of November due to complications with licensing and a few other factors.
VGBootCamp and its partners were planning to round out 2022 with a $250,000 Championship event—among the largest in Smash history—but on Nov. 23 they were notified that Nintendo would not be granting them a license to operate the event or any form of the SWT in 2023. While this didn’t outright mean the event had to be canceled, according to Nintendo’s insistence on the wording, the SWT team made the decision to shut it down along with future operations to “putting ourselves at further risk.”
This decision may have gotten the team out of potential legal fire with Nintendo should it have come to that, but because this notice came less than three weeks before the SWT 2022 Championships were set to be held in San Antonio, it left the TOs on the hook for all of the bookings it already did. Essentially, this means the team still had to pay out for the venue, hotel blocks, and any additional reserved agreements despite the event no longer happening.
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And, without players and spectators attending to help cover costs via tickets, merch, and other revenue streams—not even including any potentially lost sponsor money—it put the VGBC team in a tight spot. This resulted in VGBC also suspending its own large Smash events, including two Majors, Glitch: Duel of Fates and Double Down 2023—noting that its “future is currently uncertain.”
As a result of the SWT’s cancelation, Ludwig and his team quickly put together the Scuffed World Tour to somewhat fill the gap while also supporting VGBC. During the entire 10-plus hour stream, all donations made on Ludwig’s YouTube were tallied and given to the TOs.
By the time the two champions were crowned, that amount totaled out to over $26,267.63, with a chance to grow larger depending on how long the donation window stays open.
The future is still uncertain for VGBC, and some elements of the Smash community as a whole since the Panda and Nintendo side of the drama is still ongoing to an extent, but it won’t stop people from putting on events and getting together to play the games they love.
For now, most Smash players will be taking some time to rest and practice before the 2023 competitive season kicks off at Genesis 9 in late January. Meanwhile, the Mogul Moves team will prep for Ludwig x Tarik VALORANT Invitational next month.
