Top Smash Bros. Competitors Want Special Treatment

Some pros think they should get reserved spots in open tournament brackets

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate competitor Tyler “Marss” Martins set off a firestorm in the fighting game community over the weekend when he suggested top players should be able to register for open-bracket tournaments ahead of those he deemed less important.

“I know its top player privilege or whatever, but I’d rather see MkLeo and Light, for example, rather than two dudes who are gonna go 0-2 and ask top players for pictures after they lose,” Martins wrote on Twitter after Leonardo “MkLeo” Lopez Perez and Paris “Light” Ramirez Garcia, two of the best Smash players in the world, failed to sign up for a major Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament before it hit the extended 768-player registration cap.

The organizers of the tournament in question, Community Effort Orlando, gave an exact date and time for registration re-opening two weeks ago. Despite this, Perez and Garcia have both publicly admitted to sleeping through the sign-up period. And while Garcia is a free agent, Perez is employed by T1, a massive esports org based in South Korea, ostensibly making Smash competition his job. That he missed out on not one but two chances to register for an important event like Community Effort Orlando (and feels justified in complaining about missing out) under those circumstances is confusing.

In short, the argument being made for opening registration early to a certain class of player is that tournaments would benefit from reserving spots for better players, as they are more of a viewership draw (and thus capable of bringing in more ad revenue) than so-called randos without established placings in the community.

Source: Kotaku