Nintendo Under Fire For Lying About Players Lagging At Smash Ultimate Tournament
By Zac Cameron ·
The company is taking hits for covering up lag in one of their online tournaments, and for saying it didn't exist.
Nintendo has been hosting the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North America Open event, and things haven’t exactly been going according to plan. Nintendo Switch online services began to suffer from lag spikes during the broadcast, and Nintendo is now under fire for what they did to stop it from happening.
To put matters bluntly, Nintendo didn’t do anything to stop the lag from affecting the tournament. Instead, the broadcast team chose to switch away from the match that was happening on screen and cut to the analyst desk, where the host stated “During this viewing, you might see a little bit of a slowdown or buffering but do not worry, the players aren’t seeing that - that's not affecting them and that will not affect the VODs afterwards, of course.”
One of the players involved in the match took to Twitter to dispute that claim, replying that they suffered from “A lot of lag. We don't know where it came from because game 1 and 2 were pretty decent.”
A lot of lag. We don't know where it came from because game 1 and 2 were pretty decent.
— Isnacks (@Chef_Isnek) February 10, 2019
Esports reporter Rod ‘Slasher’ Breslau highlighted the clip on his own Twitter, adding that the host “presumably lied to viewers saying the players did not experience lag while playing. Smash Ultimate online is notoriously laggy.”
Nintendo cut stream of a match in this weekend's Smash NA Open qualifiers due to lag in the match, and then the host presumably lied to viewers saying the players did not experience lag while playing. Smash Ultimate online is notoriously laggy. #NintendoNAO19 pic.twitter.com/cxFtA9bdeg
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) February 9, 2019
Others including Twitch streamer DMBrandon also chimed in to point out that what had occurred on stream was “akin to false advertising.” There has been no official reply from Nintendo on the matter, however many fans are hoping the company at least acknowledges the situation, let alone try to fix the problems.