COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on competitive Smash

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The COVID-19 pandemic was a pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The outbreak was first identified in Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019, and recognized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, and as a public health emergency of international concern from January 30, 2020 until it was lifted on May 5, 2023. COVID-19 has been reported in more than 200 countries and territories, with major outbreaks having occurred in most of those countries; in its first year, the most affected regions were mainland China, Europe, Iran, Latin America (especially Brazil), and the United States. Public health responses have included national pandemic preparedness and response plans, travel restrictions, quarantines, curfews, event postponements and cancellations, and facility closures.

Despite the pandemic forcing Nintendo employees into working remotely, development of Fighters Pass Vol. 2 continued without many issues. It notably caused Mr. Sakurai Presents "Min Min", "Steve & Alex", and "Pyra/Mythra" to take place in Masahiro Sakurai's house instead of his studio. Sakurai also revealed in a YouTube video that there were concerns over information leaking due to work being decentralized to the homes of developers. Playtesting also had to be done online, where problems arose due to connection issues.

The pandemic had also affected the competitive Super Smash Bros. community through numerous tournament cancellations and postponements for public health and safety.

Impacts on the competitive scene

The 2020 MPGR and Spring 2020 PGRU were frozen on March 12th, 2020. No further events, including CEO Dreamland 2020, would count towards player ranking.

The Smash World Tour 2020 circuit announced that there would not be any Platinum- or Gold-tier events in March and April 2020; a later update further extended the date to June 1st, 2020. Silver events would continue as normal; however, it was recommended for sick people to stay home. Several events were canceled or postponed independently of Smash World Tour's rulings. Missed point opportunities were planned to be made up later. A TO relief fund shop was later opened on Smash.gg. With the pandemic shutting down offline tournaments for the rest of the year, the circuit was effectively cancelled. Two Silver events for Melee and three Silver events for Ultimate ended up being held.

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the evolution of the metagame in offline contexts was largely unproven until offline tournaments had returned for some time by late 2021. This included characters that received major changes during updates, but especially all downloadable characters that were released shortly before or during the global pandemic, starting with Terry and ending with Kazuya. This also applied to the legality of the stages Small Battlefield, Minecraft World, and Northern Cave, which were added to the game during that time.

The Lake, widely considered to be the best Melee Zelda player in the world, died due to COVID-19 and pre-existing health conditions in October 2022.

Online tournaments

While online tournaments had been a part of the scene for years, the cancellation of several high profile offline tournaments led many players to turn to online play for their tournament fixes. Many weeklies such as Xeno and Xanadu moved online, while tournaments such as the bunker down series and 2GG Crisis Core: Final Saga served as online fundraisers to help recoup losses. Several tournament series held online alternatives, including Pound Online, Collision Online, and Get On My Line 2020.

YouTubers Alpharad and Cr1TiKaL started hosting The Quarantine Series, a 4-month long circuit that has a prize pool ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 per tournament and a planned $50,000 for the finale. In the first tournament of the circuit, over 5,000 entrants registered to play, making it the largest known online Smash tournament without factoring in disqualifications, defeating Soaked Series Invitational's record from a month earlier. This record was later defeated by Hungrybox's tournament The Box, which had over 8,000 entrants. Due to lots of players attending online tournaments, this led Wi-Fi Warrior Rank v5 to make its rankings from 50 to 75 players.

Smash World Tour 2021 was then announced on February 20th, 2021, with online qualifiers, offline regional qualifiers, and an offline finale.

As online play rewards different tactics from offline play, the new online tournaments differ somewhat from in-person tournaments; the added input delay and lag have allowed characters such as Sonic, Cloud, and Roy to see more success. Some controversy came about when players from distant regions such as Tarik participated in these tournaments, specifically Pound Online, with many players believing tournaments should be region-locked to reduce latency. As a result, all further tournaments in The Quarantine Series (and others such as The Box) were region-locked to the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and the prize pools were extended from the top 8 to top 16 to reduce the added stress with playing online. With many more players relying on online play, frustration with the game's online service grew to a peak; the hashtag "#FixUltimateOnline" became the number one gaming trend on Twitter on April 2, 2020. Possibly as a response to this outcry, in update 8.1.0 online play stability was slightly improved, by increasing the tick rate and slightly decreasing input delay.

After Wi-Fi Warrior Rank v5 rankings, subscriber tournaments were now included, making monthlies like The Box: Lunch Box, M-Kolosseum (series), and Frame Perfect Series: ONLINE titles ongoing. Despite including subscriber tournaments, decreased player attendance in online tournaments made its ranking from 75 to 50 players.

As Super Smash Bros. Melee does not have native online play, players have to use netplay mods for emulators in order to compete online. The Dolphin emulator mod Project Slippi is one of such mods, and since June 2020 it features rollback netcode for Melee, allowing for stable online play across even long distances. However, the use of this mod has sparked controversy following the cancellation of The Big House Online, in response of a cease and desist from Nintendo. Regardless of these concerns, Project Slippi has continued to be very popular, and numerous online Melee tournaments have been hosted using it.

Reopening

In mid-2020, several regions began allowing offline competitive play, although with smaller entrants numbers and safety precautions enforced. These regions often had few cases of COVID-19 by then, such as Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, or otherwise allowed large gatherings, such as France and Germany. In spite of this return, both the MPGR and the PGRU remained frozen for the rest of the year, effectively cancelling them altogether. Conversely, OrionRank Ultimate: Eclipse would retroactively take several tournaments during this time into account following the list's announcement in the following year.

In early 2021, vaccines for COVID-19 began to roll out, and by May 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced fully vaccinated adults could stop wearing masks and no longer had to perform social distancing. Despite continued safety concerns, some American locals reopened during this time with safety precautions. The first national tournament in the United States was InfinityCON Tally 2021, held in Florida on June 5th-6th, where 422 people attended, becoming the largest Smash event since CEO Dreamland 2020 almost 14 months prior. It was followed by numerous other large scale tournaments like Kagaribi 4, Temple: Hermès Edition and Riptide. The Smash World Tour 2021 regional finals were also held during this period, though many faced delays and other significant issues; the South American and Oceanian offline finals were cancelled, while the Southeast Asia players were unable to attend the East Asia Regional Finals in Japan. To make up for this, the qualified players for the Championships were selected either via an online qualifier (Br1 AV for South America Ultimate) or by the tournament organizers (Chape and HP for South America Melee, Sora and Jdizzle for Oceania, and XIFL for Southeast Asia). The Smash World Tour 2021 Championships were eventually able to be held at the planned date without any significant issues, besides some of the previously qualified players being unable to attend.

By comparison, Melee's tournament scene has been more sparse and limited to small locals and invitationals until Riptide. Even afterwards, the recovery of the Melee scene remained slower than Ultimate, with major tournaments having a smaller scale and top players attending less often.

Similarly, Smash 64 has been slow to recover its scene and was not featured at a major event until Low Tide City 2021. Brawl and Smash 4 were both already largely dormant before the pandemic and were not featured at a major until Super Smash Con: Fall Fest, which traditionally hosts tournaments for every official Smash game. Although Brawl events eventually saw a resurgence in the following years, Smash 4's scene continued to dwindle, owing to a lack of interest in the game.

On November 19th, 2021, the MPGR and PGRU announced their return on January 1st, 2022 after a two-year hiatus. Due to travel concerns, the rankings were separated into three regions: North America, Europe, and Japan. Minimum activity requirements would be loosened to lessen the pressure on players to travel. PGstats stated that depending on international travel restrictions, a global PGR may resume as soon as the end of 2022. However, on December 28th, 2021, PGstats announced the MPGR and PGRU would not be reopening on January 1st, 2022 due to the rise of COVID cases globally. As such, the MPGR Summer 2022 and PGRU v3 seasons did not begin until March 1st, 2022, with the former concluding on July 11th and the latter on July 13th. In addition, between January and February 2022, a series of articles and videos titled PGRContenders were published, looking at some of the best players in North America and Europe to watch heading into the new season. Panelists of the tier list only considered tournaments in 2021 for the list; as such, the events in early-2022 remain unranked by the Panda rankings.

In the absence of a proper ranking, alternative ranking OrionRank released two different lists for Ultimate: the OrionRank Pre-Quarantine, a list of the best 100 players in the short time span before the pandemic began, and the OrionRank Ultimate: Eclipse, which covered competitive play during the pandemic and all of 2021. With both lists being accepted by most of the community, including being used as a requirement for eligibility in the voting phase for three Ultimate Summit events, OrionRank became the de-facto global ranking in the post-pandemic metagame.

On May 11th, 2023, the United States Department of Health and Human Services declared the COVID-19 pandemic officially over, with the rest of the world following suit by that September. After these dates, offline tournaments could officially be held with no prior restrictions. By then, however, the offline scene had already been active for over a year. As such, the announcement had little to no impact on offline competitive play.

List of offline tournaments during the pandemic

The following is a list of notable tournaments that were held offline during the pandemic period, starting from the MPGR/PGR freeze period on March 12th, 2020 and ending with the rankings' return on March 1st, 2022.

Tournament	Dates	Location	Attendance	Games
Don't Stomp On Me	March 14th, 2020	Corsicana, Texas	89
CEO Dreamland 2020	March 13th-15th, 2020	Orlando, Florida	970
Keystoned IV	March 14th-15th, 2020	Hatboro, Pennsylvania	50
RFTV DOJO - LA DESPEDIDA: Thanks For Playing	March 14th, 2020	Mexico City	138
Kurobra 20	March 21st, 2020	Fujisawa	64
Super Smash Stadium 1	July 25th, 2020	Villeneuve-d'Ascq	144
Bour'pif Arena 6	August 30th, 2020	Thonon-les-Bains	128
Sumabato SP 13	September 20th, 2020	Osaka	65
TWELVE I - 2020	September 26th, 2020	Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois	121
Smash Contest: DoKomi 2020	September 26th-27th, 2020	Düsseldorf	150
WANTED SAISON 4 - 3 Years Anniversary	October 10th, 2020	Créteil	179
Sumabato SP 14	October 11th, 2020	Osaka	96
Eastern Powerhouse Invitational FINAL	October 24th, 2020	Kanto	12
4o4 Monster Smash Halloween Tournament	October 31st, 2020	Atlanta, Georgia	47
Maesuma TOP 4	October 31st-November 1st, 2020	Osaka	128
Sumabato SP 15	November 15th, 2020	Osaka	160
Kanto 2020	November 22nd, 2020	Tokyo	41
Mēsuma	November 29th, 2020	Aichi Prefecture	128
Kagaribi	December 13th, 2020	Tokyo	133
Pissmas 2	December 20th, 2020	Peachester	131
TSC 13	December 26th, 2020	Miyagi Prefecture	136
Sumabato SP 16	December 26th, 2020	Osaka	128
TNT Nak 2021	January 24th, 2021	Lima	20
Sumabato SP 17	March 7th, 2021	Osaka	128
Kagaribi 3	March 26th-27th, 2021	Tokyo	132
LEVELUP Arena Premier Tournament	April 27th, 2021	Overland Park, Kansas	192
Speedy Summit 3	May 15th, 2021	Provo, Utah	26
Super Smash Stadium Édition Battlefield	May 29th, 2021	Lille	139
Super Smash Stadium Édition Peach Castle	May 30th, 2021	Lille	135
InfinityCON Tally 2021	June 5th-6th, 2021	Tallahassee, Florida	422
The Dungeon	June 5th-6th, 2021	Colorado Springs, Colorado	186
Momentous	June 12th, 2021	New York City, New York	16
Keystoned 4.5	June 19th-20th, 2021	Hatboro, Pennsylvania	42
Maji Georgia Invitational	June 19th-20th, 2021	Johns Creek, Georgia	16
WANTED SAISON 4 - Chapter 2	June 20th, 2021	Créteil	267
The New Norm 1	June 20th-21st, 2021	Los Angeles, California	69
Bourbon State Gaming: Stop Your Friendlies	June 26th, 2021	Lexington, Kentucky	200
MUERTE AL ONLINE	June 26th, 2021	Monterrey	12
Ronin Rumble Cup	June 26th, 2021	Alachua, Florida	183
Kagaribi 4	June 26th-27th, 2021	Tokyo	386
TWELVE II - 2021	June 26th-27th, 2021	Paris	187
GI Carnival	July 3rd, 2021	Tokyo	8
Maesuma TOP 5	July 3rd-4th, 2021	Osaka	128
Coupe DitootiD 2	July 3rd-4th, 2021	Narbonne	120
LEVELUP Arena 2	July 10th, 2021	Overland Park, Kansas	239
Battle Arena NightClub	July 11th, 2021	Melbourne	128
Smash Summit 11	July 15th-18th, 2021	Los Angels, California	16
Sumabato SP 18	July 23rd, 2021	Osaka	128
Sumabato SP 19	July 24th, 2021	Osaka	128
Push the Limit 12	July 24th, 2021	Waitham, Massachussets	129
No Man's Land	July 24th-25th, 2021	Wichita Falls, Texas	149
CROSSxUP	July 25th, 2021	Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania	194
The Comeback	July 31st, 2021	Laurel, Maryland	243
Battle of Z: Toronto Strikes Back	July 31st, 2021	Montreal	153
Cherry's Glasmine 001	July 31st, 2021	Pachuca	64
Warlock in The Multiverse of Hex	August 7th, 2021	Mexico City	16
Anime Houston 2021	August 6th-8th, 2021	Houston, Texas	113
Smash Contest: DoKomi 2021	August 7th-8th, 2021	Düsseldorf	318
Invasion	August 14th, 2021	Birmingham	193
Ultimate WANTED 3	August 12th-15th, 2021	Créteil	532
Hold That L 6	August 14th-15th, 2021	Chicago, Illinois	149
DATEV Ultimate Series - Prelude 5	August 21st, 2021	Nuremberg	126
Spiral Mountain	August 21st, 2021	Houston, Texas	137
SWT: Central America Ultimate Regional Finals	August 21st-22nd, 2021	unknown	16
Mega Smash Mondays 240	August 23rd, 2021	La Mirada, California	320
Back in Blood	August 28th, 2021	Portland, Oregon	223
TGM Brawl 1	August 28th, 2021	Mainz	128
Smash Ultimate Summit 3	August 26th-29th, 2021	Los Angeles, California	16
SWT: Central America Melee Regional Finals	August 28th-29th, 2021	unknown	16
Bour'pif Arena 7	August 28th-29th, 2021	Thonon-les-Bains	128
Kamp Kone	August 27th-30th, 2021	Derby	134
Temple: Hermès Edition	September 4th-5th, 2021	Villeneuve-d-Ascq	863
Le Big Hub	September 5th, 2021	Moncton	143
Undertow	September 11th, 2021	Sandusky, Ohio	195
Riptide	September 10th-12th, 2021	Sandusky, Ohio	1,776
CT Gamercon 4	September 18th-19th, 2021	Montville, Connecticut	370
SWT: Europe Ultimate Regional Finals	September 18th-19th, 2021	Vienna	16
LEVELUP Arena 3	September 18th-19th, 2021	Overland Park, Kansas