Quote:The competitive community for Nintendo’s popular Super Smash Bros. series has recently been rocked by an overwhelming amount of sexual misconduct allegations. An endless stream of victims—many speaking out against highly-skilled, popular, or otherwise powerful individuals—has come forward to expose the dark underbelly of a scene built around playing an ostensible children’s game. This has sparked serious conversation about what can be done to hold people accountable and prevent such widespread abuse in the future.

In the last week, according to Kotaku’s tracking of statements made on social media, more than 50 victims have come forward to expose someone in the Smash community of some sort of sexual misconduct. These accusations include multiple instances of rape, sexual assault, preying on minors, and grooming underage players. Several have resulted in bans from various tournament regions. Esports sponsors are retreating en masse. Without a true governing body to investigate allegations and enforce punishment, however, it’s often left up to the multitude of disparate Smash organizers to decide for themselves what to do on the local level. And as we’ve seen, that’s often a recipe for disaster, especially with how many children attend these events.

(10-24-2020, 05:01 PM)blackrosex0x0 Wrote: Wow, I had no idea about this. This is pretty sad to hear about. 50+ victims coming forth is no joke.

(10-24-2020, 05:36 PM)Jiggly Wrote: Jesus this sounds awful. If even one of the claims is true.. it's sad.

Is this all isolated to the events, or are players somehow getting groomed via in game communication too?

(10-25-2020, 04:58 PM)Oni Wrote:

(10-24-2020, 05:36 PM)Jiggly Wrote: Jesus this sounds awful. If even one of the claims is true.. it's sad.

Is this all isolated to the events, or are players somehow getting groomed via in game communication too?

Most of this happened around the competitive events/scene. While Nintendo has added voice chat in Ultimate, I think most of these allegations predate that.