Over 1,000 registered entrants haven’t showed up for the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament at Evo Japan this year. Evo Japan 2020 is going on right now, having started just yesterday, and is set to conclude on the evening of January 26th.
Often referred to by fans as “the Super Bowl of fighting games,” the annual Evolution tournament has been a staple of the fighting game community in the United States for years. However, Evo Japan is a relatively recent phenomenon - the first tournament took place in 2016. It has been held again every year since, but the lineup of games at Evo Japan is usually a bit different than the US lineup. Titles that aren’t as competitively popular in Japan (such as Super Smash Bros.) have been omitted from the tournament in the past. 2020 marks the first year that a Smash game has appeared at Evo Japan, but it already seems to be having issues.
According to a translated report from Dot Esports, roughly 1,169 out of 2,988 total registrants didn’t show up to compete in their pool matches for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at Evo Japan 2020. That’s nearly 40 percent of the original entrants. Of course, this resulted in a huge number of disqualifications and “left most of the 256 day-one brackets with four players getting first-round byes due to a lack of competitors.” This makes Smash Ultimate the game with the most disqualifications by far, but there are still more than enough competitors left for the tournament to continue as it normally would.
The report points to “several factors” that contributed to all the absences. First and foremost, Evo Japan is a free-entry tournament - in contrast to its North American counterpart, which requires players to pay an entry fee to reserve a spot in the pools. As a result, many of Evo Japan’s entrants had no financial incentive to actually show up. Secondly, registration for the event closed earlier than anticipated because “the tournament organizer needed to put a cap on Smash due to how large the initial wave of signups was”.
It looks like this whole snafu happened due to Evo Japan’s loose regulations, and not because of anything to do with the game itself. Many fans may be upset with recent Smash Ultimate announcements, but they’re definitely not that upset. Hopefully the rest of the tournament will now continue smoothly, and many of Japan’s top players are still competing for the Evo grand prize, which makes for plenty of exciting Super Smash Bros. Ultimate matches to come.
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Source: Dot Esports
