Big Update to Huge Drama
2022 ж. 6 Жел.
1 154 940 Рет қаралды
just sub and watch my chessboxing event that's all goodnight
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edited by: ludwig - recording took 50 minutes
OKAY I SAID CHESSBOXING WAS MARCH 11 IT'S DECEMBER 11 I RECORDED AT 3 AM LOL ANYWAY GET A TICKET :) ludwig.gg
bozo
lostwig
hit the luddy
Lmaoo I was so confused 🤣
bro was FADED THAN A HO. cut him some slack, Yodie Gang! Ya feeeeeeel me? Yuh!
1:08 This drama was so intense that Ludwig had to delay his chessboxing event by 3 months
@here is the full clip no one cares about your sadge videos newb
Wait that wasn’t a slip of the tongue?
Millionaire Mogul mail man mislead many maliciously
@@AD-lh3jk nah it was a slip, that's the joke
@@AD-lh3jk it was lol. The comment is just a joke
I'm not even remotely into Smash and its scene, but it has been fascinating hearing about all this. It's also made me respect Mogul Mails ability to break down a story in a way that is engaging for people who don't know anything about that scene.
The way you described it made Alan sound like a tragic villain, someone who was too worried about the future to care about the present. If it is like Ludwig said, then the path to hell was paved with good intentions.
How does he sound like he has good intentions? He just sounds manipulative and like a compulsive lier that tried to destroy the entire already existing scene for his own monetary benifit.
I hate how people take the idea that someone MAY be a bad person and use it as an excuse to be an absolutely awful person to them. Like seriously, big bad man allegedly ruined a fun event I was excited to watch, let me threaten his wife and children so they have to flee their home. Wtf.
thats Western social media culture for you :) why I stay off twitter, because it's intellectually and emotionally draining.
I dont care even if he was a horrible person. You don't threaten his family or anyone close to him. I'd say you don't threaten anyone at all but maybe that's too much to ask for some people
@@chubbybutterflies8971 speaking as an entity that grew up in South East Asia, that part of the world ain’t that much better The Internet introduced pseudo-democratic noise. Noise gets defined by lowest common denominator, resulting in often groupthink extreme conclusions & actions Literally with enough numbers anything can be toxic & dog shit dangerous, no matter what platform (Unless it’s something simple maybe, like a kids game 🤷♂️)
Def was the ultimate players
@@AD-lh3jk people made toontown toxic, never underestimate the internet 😂
on the Twitter post with Alan's response, the entire comment section was "waiting for the mogul mail" which really says a lot about the success of this channel, that peoples source for this kind of news is just Ludwig. Really well done, this channel is awesome
This also points to the fact that people don't want to form their own opinions, but side with someone they have designated. It means Lud has a LOT of control over the opinions of a good chunk of the Smash community and this is NOT a good thing, even if Lud doesn't abuse this power. People should be forming their own opinions, not waiting for someone to tell them what to think. If you've wondered why politics(especially in America) has become so polarized, this phenomenon is why.
@@choccy_bagel It's a shame that "better than a twitter shitshow" is the benchmark for intelligent discourse these days
@@choccy_bagel right, more than willing to bet the majority of people just didn't want to read a 30 page document on Twitter lmao. Having someone cut down and curate the info does not mean you can no longer have your own opinion - similarly to watching the news.
@@dmoogle2006 So you read every contract, EULA and other such things yourself, right? You don't have a lawyer go over them for you and explain in easier terms what they mean? Because you are expecting exactly that from everyone else with that statement. All the people were doing when they said they were waiting for MogulMail is that they were waiting for Lud to summarize it for them and because there is absolutely no point for everyone to take the enormous amount of time to read the entire thing when we know Lud will take the time to read through it and create a video to explain it and explain how it is completely bullshit, which is exactly what he did.
@@choccy_bagel Your point is that people are CAPABLE of forming their own opinion and doing their own research ??? ... which like is true... but the MAJORITY of people will have had their opinion formed by watching this video. These videos get like a million views and for most people it is probably the only thing they see about this drama at all.
Holy shit, that last part really just made Alan look like a sympathetic but crazy Pokemon villain.
Nah he deserves to be broke and starve.
Him yelling "WHY WON'T YOU WORK WITH ME?!?!" basically sums up his whole vibe
He is basically the stereotype villain that wants to demolish the whole area and build some kind of dystopian complex at the place.
Completely unrelated to the topic: I really like how you manage your story with all the tabs on chrome being organized in order that you want to talk about each topic. It's a little thing, but it is satisfying to watch.
I noticed that on tab 3 and was like "wow that was really useful"
it's super satisfying, especially since seeing all of those are kind of overwhelming lol
@mana256k We get it. You're miserable
@mana256k He never said he was impressed, just that he liked it and found it satisfying
Yeah after i watched charlie scrolling down the long text, i realized Ludwig technique kinda dope
I appreciate Ludwig saying don’t just believe me because I say something, it promotes a more healthy environment of doing your own research and I think that’s good especially in today’s world
Makes me believe him when he just says something even MORE
@@tooevil7665 tbh most peoples reading comprehension is so bad they probably should listen anyway. Some of the conclusions twitter is getting from the statements is not even bad just completely off
Damn what's with all these bots
@@FroyourHistory join us
i think if you need to be told to think for yourself you’re already too far gone
Nobody views themselves as the villain in their own story. In Alan's eyes, everything he did was justified and for the betterment of the community. He highlights how kindly he talked to people, and how good the deals people were offered were. But if people didn't want to take them, they didn't want to take them, and they had no obligation to. Repeatedly bringing up that partnering with Panda gives you safety and legitimacy would be perceived as a threat/protection racket. Especially when someone has already rejected the partnership. It's Hubris. It's Light Yagami syndrome. It's thinking you know what's best for the community. How to save it. How to turn it profitable. How to legitimize it. He views himself as a savior, but others clearly don't agree. If I were a 35 y/o MD and Owner/CEO of a Multi-Million dollar eSports organization, I'd probably have quite the ego / delusions of grandeur too.
aka ideology syndrome
Aka god complex
Ooh yes this is what I've been thinking too but I didn't know how to express it, thank you
So main character syndrome
It seemed to me like Alan had this big deal going on with Nintendo and didn't want to share the details with everyone else thinking they might either take a slice away or the whole pie from him (taking his idea). So he went about it in a round about way that didn't exactly put himself in the audience's shoes to understand what he's actually asking of them. Even though in his mind the deal is good because he sees the End Game if they accepted it, but he fails to see what they're seeing, he's too focused on the success of it all that he became blinded. Was it so much to just tell people or someone trustworthy of your plan? Even in person? It seemed all so rush. Could have been as simple as "Hey, I'm trying to work on commercialising Smash". The fact this guy worked on this for 4 years? Almost feels like he didn't work on it at all, he speed ran the thing to the ground in a matter of days. It was like 1 guy having an idea and 9 other guys not having it, but the 1 guy proceeded with his plans oblivious to the opinions of the other 9.
Alan's actions make a lot more sense if you think of them as being done by someone who thinks that the sky is falling over something that he really loved. It doesn't excuse the unprofessionalism, but I could see urgency coming across as hostility with a lot of tournament organizers.
The problem is he was the one that caused the sky to fall by going to Nintendo in the first place
"they said they had no expectations of a lot of people showing up" sounds like he contacted the hotel after the event was cancelled so the front end employee saw no even planned. That is not evidence of a "fake event"
1:07 Don't worry. I'll definitely watch your chess boxing stream on "March 11." Can't wait!
NO SHUTUP IT' DECEMBER
@@MogulMail I thought you moved the event lmao
@@MogulMail why so many bots :(
What happened here?
i never knew there was a button for the time 2:08 2:08 2:08 2:09
You're so good at turning this entire response into a coherent interesting story, what a great watch
I'm an old fan of Ludwig but a new fan of mogul mail and I gotta say he is killing it, I've been so busy and haven't watched a ton of KZhead recently but to my knowledge he's doing content for his main channel, the yard, 2 huge events, mogul mail, and probably more. Mad fucking props to you man
Now this is the fast content I came to mogul mail for. Wish Ludwig was this on top of the news
Ludwig and Charlie absolutely carry the gaming/tech news space and I love it
Ludwig is slacking mogule male took his lane
Who’s Ludwig
Ludwig has been really helpful for me in giving a pretty good summary in all of this Smash stuff. I'd also recommend watch Hungrybox's videos on this Smash situation since he's a big figure head of Smash and understands a lot of this in a more thorough manner.
Ludwig? Who is this stranger you speak of?
Mutahar/some ordinary gamers, sometimes makes news over this kind of stuff, you might want to check him out.
Basically, Alan is the hero in his own story but the villain in everyone else’s
This was clearly one of, if not the most, time and effort you've put into making a Mogul Mail video, and it shows. Thank you for all you're doing for the community, Lud.
And yet he still manages to massively misrepresent the post. Go read it for yourself please it takes 30 mins. not a massive effort kekw
You know its the real deal when mogul mail uploads a 30 min video on a drama
Ok so Alan's defence is 'This was all a conspiracy by Smash World Tour to take me down'.
Not all of it, but that claim was mostly baseless. The other part is that Alan had no reason to go after SWT and that SWT was not going to obtain a license by Nintendo in the time frame they set out yet still went with that choice. Not to mention that Alan already decided to have the Panda Final set on a far worse date already and allowed multiple people in PandaGlobal go to SWT. There is no incentive or real motive for Alan or even Nintendo to explicitly go after SWT. PandaGlobal does not benefit in anyway from SWT taking place in a completely different streaming date from PandaGlobal. The fact that even Nintendo had stated that they were not going after SWT and that Alan was constantly advocating for the community is what causes the confusion At the end of the day, Nintendo simply said they weren't going to grant the license, but did not try to cancel the event and VGBC assumed it meant that the event can no longer be run b/c it didn't have a license.
I think in Alan's mind he was trying to persuade event organizers to join Panda with the proposition that their event could be licensed. In case they stuck with another company they might get shut down instead. Instead, the event organizers thought that he would actively try to shut their event down if they didn't join, therefor the "strong arming" accusations. Now, I'm no expert so I refrain from having an opinion whether what he did was right or wrong, but I can understand both sides.
The way Ludwig articulates Mogul Mail is so incredible you can get so lost in every detail and I love how he adds his opinions but still doesnt say or mean them like they are close to fact giving you that room to form your own
Its like that line from Arcane - "In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good"
I appreciate mogul mail's dedication to congest a 32-page document for us. Just look at how many tabs he has open 💀
congest? you got a stuffy nose? edit - someone really just asked if english wasn't my first language (then deleted it). lmao. pick up a dictionary.
@@bsings7928 Congest is the wrong word.
*Compress
*consume
@@Pheatan ingest would also work, though it changes the meaning of the sentence.
Man, whenever I see that many tabs open for Lud, I get a drink, maybe some food, we’re in for a GOOD explanation of what’s going on Thank you Ludwig
The whole "why won't you work with me" just sounds like the adult version of "why won't you be my friend". I think its obvious Alan is oblivious to how he comes off.
I completely agree with your take of Alan basically catering to Nintendo instead of the Smash community. Even if he genuinely believes he had good intentions, he actively made the community worse by trying to intimidate all these other organizations. His goal should’ve been to make the community better for the players, not for Nintendo
It would have been both. Make competitive smash more viable for a larger audience and allow people to create a career off of smash while also benefitting nintendo. He was trying to do a Win-Win situation where everyone benefits.
@@YightLagami *In theory* it would have been both. Doesn't mean it would have been in practice. Well intended or not, conforming multiple grass roots Tournaments to a single homogenized standard with Panda as a centralized authority to hand out licenses sounds like it would lead to a lot of issues. There's a compilation of tweets from TOs that mention some of the specific issues they had with how exactly Alan was approaching it. Maybe he really was refining things and it would have worked out for the best in the long run. But unfortunately in practice he did not pitch his vision well to the key people he needed to convince - so much so that at least some of them felt they were being coerced (before he had ever even interacted with Ken Chen)
100%, instead of working with Nintendo and TOs to try to make it easier for them to license and find marketing(which would pay players better in turn), he worked against them for his own aspirations of having it all under big daddy Nintendo with him at the Panda League helm. I understand what Alan was trying to do but that is just corporatizing an independent movement, which most certainly will rub everyone the wrong way.
@@IronicHavoc Panda itself is much less strict and more lenient than Nintendo. PandaGlobal or Alan would still be using Nintendo's guidelines in judging what events could be licensed, but since Allan is ingrained in the smash community, he would be able to grant licenses more quickly. I think you are confused to believe that Panda was trying to homogenize the scene. The standards were already set by Nintendo themselves. Panda giving out licenses meant that obtaining them from Nintendo would much easier for everyone involved. Ultimately, at the end of the day, you didn't need a license to run an event, but getting one would greatly benefitted everyone involved. In practice or theory, many people would prefer a company run by a Smash TO help gain licensing by Nintendo without having to wait for Nintendo's approval which would take longer in theory and practice.
@@skataneric Alan was trying to make it easier. The other TO’s took that as Alan threatening them rather than him recommending guidelines for those TO’s to get licensing. The only thing Alan did badly was try to push for a response by other TO’s b/c they outright ghosted or went unresponsive. Which at the end of the day had nothing to do with SWT being cancelled. I think the more of a bogeyman you claim Alan or Nintendo to be, the more closed you make the community. Ultimately, if you want nintendo’s license, you would have to follow their guidelines. In a case like SWT where they followed Nintendo’s guidelines, it would still take 3 years or more based on Alan’s statement to get a license which wouldn’t happen before the event. Alan and PandaGlobal supporting licensing and streamlining the process makes it easier for everyone involved everyone involved where as asking for Nintendo of Japan for a license is not sustainable. Nintendo supports Panda and then Panda supports the TOs to support the community. Panda wasn’t going to make those guidelines stricter than Nintendo’s but instead more lenient/faster to get approval
Who would've thought when Melee dropped how much drama would follow it forever
I fucking love this channel. I've enjoyed Lud's content since I started watching a few years ago but now I actually respect him as a person with a solid moral compass and a drive to be transparent with his viewers
This was the most edited Mogul Mail ever, thank you for the possible conclusion to this crazy drama
The only way this drama is gonna get more juicy is when we find out Dr Alan is two identical twins with one being evil and manipulative and the other good and supportive like a Spanish soap opera...
El Hermano moment
The question is: which Dr. Alan twin are you? 👀🤨
and what if it turns out that Alan isn't even a doctor, his twin is! *gasp*
Dude
I love seeing people’s responses on the Twitter thread saying they’re waiting for the Mogul Mail on it
W
If conversations are truly smooth I doubt anything like this occurs. It would take a lot to plan a whole event, get within weeks of it, and feel as if there's no other option than shutting it down. At a bare minimum he definitely needs to work on communication
My conspiracy is that this was all Nintendo's goal from the start. Give both sides conflicting information under the table and off the books. They'd learned from the last time that the community backlash for this behavior was large (even if it didn't actually hurt their bottom line). They chose to do it this way this time so that the competitive Smash community would tear itself apart from the inside and Nintendo could remain clean of any blame.
Agreed. Nintendo would love for the Smash scene to destroy itself while they're just on the sidelines, with everyone just treating them like "yeah Nintendo are kinda bad but we just have to deal with them lol" (which is how it seems most people see them right now). Nintendo are, and always have been, the real destroyers of the Smash scene.
Damn that actually kinda make sense and indeed a possibility we are facing rn 😅
Honestly it would be some 4D chess shit from Nintendo. But realistically, I think it is just a huge corporation with tons of layered bureaucracy. Nintendo, like many corporations that operate internationally has a certain hierarchy established. From what we know is that VGBC, BTS, and most of TOs deal with the regular staff, who are managed by a director, who takes orders from the national branch (think Nintendo of America) who takes orders from Nintendo Ltd, Japan. Essentially what tends to happen is that lower employee conveys one thing, the manager hears of it and either approves or rejects the proposal, or a higher-up in NoA or even NoJ rejects that proposal leaving a lot of employees in an awkward spot. I think a lot of the silence is essentially the immense inefficiency of communication between branches both horizontally and vertically, which means unless it is deemed a priority, things are not happening for months. I think Alan had access to some higher up in the chain than VGBC did. However, I think he lacks communication skills sufficient to placate Nintendo and so after speaking with Alan, Nintendo likely got the wrong message. Alan to give him the benefit of the doubt, truly believed he was a savior of Smash, since he accomplished one thing no one else did, have direct connections and partnerships with Nintendo. And so in his messiah complex, he believe that to save the scene, everyone must be centralized under the umbrella of Nintendo and didn't see or kindly take rejection from other TOs and orgs but have a justified distrust of Nintendo.
I just finished reading the document and then this notification, honestly man it’s really hard to get the complete full story and I don’t think we ever will get that. It all honestly just sucks, smash was doing so well recently it feels like every time we take a step forward we also take 2 steps back
@Nоt RiскrоII 🅥 That's not how that works. You don't get to just do the exact same thing, slap a "fUnNy" caption on it, and call it parody or satire when you're still just doing the exact same thing as the bots.
Yea, the problem with this whole thing is that, as someone not in the smash community, there’s almost nothing in terms of evidence. I don’t care about accounts from “respected” individuals. I want real evidence, so I can’t come to any conclusions.
I think it’s basically Alan came in with good intentions but had a vision for the scene no one else agreed with. Along with he was never transparent and insinuated a lot of this and that. But basically it’s either multiple independent tournament organizers and independent businesses came together and lied or Alan lied lol
@@flogos989 you’ll never get that because a lot of these things happen in conversations and calls which is illegal to record lol. But you can read between the lines of everyone’s statements, and Alan’s have a lot of inconsistencies , inconsistent with his own and panda’s even. Like the hotel not being booked, but there was already evidence it was booked and people were paid
@@Jason_Ultimate they are also bots my guy
"An authoritarian smash regime is inevitable, so just let me be your dictator." - Alan, probably
Alan is the guy who surrenders to the invading army to become the puppet ruler.
Well, to be fair it seems as though he knew that since nintendo was canceling events that were not licensed, he was trying to get everyone to get licensed and do things that way and when he tells people that the events are not going to happen, it's not him threatening, just him saying "yeah if they don't get licensed they won't get to do it" while having information that nintendo didn't approve of them and was stringing them along. It seems like he was a vehicle by nintendo to make them money and he just thought nintendo was on his side and he didn't realize he was getting used until it all came out.
@@pebcak so he’s the French from WW2
@@pebcak Marshal Philippe Pétain moment (Okay, to be fair, Vichy France wasn’t exactly a puppet for most of the war, but they definitely collaborated with the Nazis)
The little monologue at the end was so passionate yet objective; I wish Ludwig could achieve that kind of emotion & balance.
That closing statements are badass! I'm here for it
Ludwig is like the coffeezilla of smash drama at this point
@here is the full clip reported
@TheMasterZar lol me too
thanks for this update mr mail.very comprehensive! shits crazy
I'll keep saying it, if neither party confirms they banned the tournament, just go through with it, if someone speaks up, we know who wanted it to be shut down
can't wait to watch chessboxing on march 11!
i had to double check on what he said XD
March 11th is going to be both Pog and Champ
It’s December 11th. He made an oopsie.
as someone who doesn't use twitter, I now feel like I do very well done
XD okay thank you so much for that final bit, I get it was lack of sleep but seriously that joke at the end was so needed after all the drama
Well said. Alan was about to let Nintendo sneakily take over everything…..EVERYTHING. It’s a difficult situation.
I'm impressed with how consistent Ludwig is in his support of smash. I could not care less about smash but it's cool to see him put his money where his mouth is time and time again. I hope that i would do the same for the communities i care about if I was in his shoes. !
It's the scene he came up in
I think Ludwig should react to/read the fan comic series "Reviving the Smash Fighters". Gabeleth's channel fandubbed the entire thing!!! It'd be a nice morale booster after everything that's happened for the Smash Community.
Same. I don't play Smash, but I love gaming and I don't like seeing something like this happen to people so passionate about gaming.
holy shit the bots are talking to eachother
Melee is fucking SICK is why
The only thing i've accepted is that Dr Alan is the character with good intentions that became the antagonist because his methods were wrong and as much as he wanted to do good, he ended up as the villain. Even tho you have to defeat them and bring peace to the land, you can't help to wonder if he's that evil after all, but the damage is already done and there's no going back.
this is an absolutely great video, and highlights how special the smash scene really is. really hoping there'll be a positive light at the end of this tunnel, and cant wait to watch the scuffed world tour in like 2 weeks!
Mogul Mail has become one of the most transparent and trustworthy news sources in the gaming/tech world, Lud understands that things are not black and white and he keeps up with the story as it evolves. Thanks LUD
Why are you talking about Lud ? Hes not even in this video
YEAAA what's going on guys it's scarce here got nothing on this guy with the monthly uploads or whatever
LUD whos that? bro this is mogul mail guy bro who tf is lud
him and charlie absolutely carry I love it
really getting his milage on that journalism degree
Dr. Alan: I didn't do it guys. Also Dr. Alan: Now, excuse me while I make this statement with nothing but insinuations and no receipts... and try to get you to infer some kind of evil conspiracy... you know... like a Super Villain would.
Faxx
even funnier considering the "my response (*WITH EVIDENCE*) is coming" tweet
@@bosharoo He really highlighted the difference between "Evidence" and "Proof!" 😂
Because he is under immense duress of his entire company going under ruin in the span of 5 days and Alan being solely blamed for Smash World Tour being cancelled which he most likely had nothing to do with yet got hit in the cross fire of the blame. The initial statement of SWT is very clearly him being confused for why the event was cancelled given that he believed wholeheartedly that Nintendo supported the event, but also the fact that VGBC was not going to get a license in the timeframe they set. Everything with BTS sounds like Alan trying to help the community his own way and the other TO's pushing back against it which just sounds like beef/drama unrelated to SWT altogether.
@@YightLagami you stating he had nothing to do with might not be a 100% true until nintendo makes another statement
Honestly I think that him believing the Nintendo shit was inevitable led to him having a bit of a savior complex and inflated his ego way to huge which is so terrible because it means that he probably doesn't even understand that he did anything wrong.
I don't know if anyone out there has ever played the game Tales of Vesperia (spoilers incoming i guess), but I think Alan is matching closely to Duke, the game's final boss. Duke is encountered all throughout the story (mainly musing on the flaws of humanity and their destructive tendencies), but he's never painted as the main antagonist until towards the end. Duke isn't really a villain - he's an antihero. He wants to guarantee the safety of the world he lives in, but thinks the only way to do it is to end all of humanity so nature can find its own way again. The main protagonists fight him to keep that from happening and show him their resolve that there is another way. In the same way, I do think Alan wants what is best for "the world" of Smash - but he wants it in the way that would kill off everything the smash community has become. He's an antihero. He got a little too caught up in the dream and actually believed that Nintendo would operate the smash community in the way other major esports corporations regulate their games. Knowing Nintendo, they'd over-regulate everything. They'd suck the life out of what has made smash tournaments so special. They're not a competitive esports type of company by nature. I feel sorry for Alan, reps from PG that have decided to quit, and for SWT. There's no good that's coming out of this really (except for Ludwig's Scuffed World Tour event). At the end of the day, smash has been around for 20+ years and no matter the fact that people can't make a living on it, they continue to play and watch and run events. Alan decided to believe in the wrong thing and handled everything so abysmally. I believe in the people and players of the community to keep the game alive, even if they have to play for $25 in someone's garage (to paraphrase Mang0). These games won't die as long as we don't let them.
We know from pokemon tournaments that nintendo is really really good when it comes to professional worldwide events and their regulation is never that strict. I honestly think that what you are saying is true, but alan/panda isn't in the wrong as they are kinda just trying to improve how the tournaments work and want more money and sponsors for all, including the smaller county-wide tournaments. In a perfect world, alan is completely in the right, but we know that the world isn't perfect and it all went poorly and alan promising something wasn't going to happen because it wasn't licensed wasn't him threatening, just informing and trying to tell everyone that they have to do things through nintendo now. It seems like he was just too optimistic about the whole thing when in reality no one liked the fact that they would have to report directly through nintendo for Smash (Which again, has never been an issue for pokemon).
@@Jacknorrington Pokemon is sort of unique. Nintendo has some say because they are part owners of The Pokemon Company. However, the Professor Program (judges) and tournaments are done through Play! POkemon, a branch of The Pokemon Company International, while in Japan The Pokemon Company has direct involvement in those tournaments. Notice if you go to large Regional or International tournaments you will see Nintendo and Pokemon Company EMployees incognito keeping an eye on things, such as mods, a bullet proof briefcase with a special Switch/3DS/DS, or other issues and they report the TO back to the company. Usually, it turns out well, other times ... well there was an intense controversy.
@@Jacknorrington That's actually an interesting point and I appreciate you sharing that. I guess why I have such a pessimistic view of how Nintendo would handle Smash is because they clearly _don't_ want it to be the flagship competitive IP. They've never even expressed a hint of interest in operating it at that kind of level. They don't even like the rule sets tournaments run on (I'm pretty sure the rare Nintendo-sponsored Smash event always had items?). Either way, it's a mystery why they resist Smash so much, but not Pokemon.
This is pure caos and I'm here for it
I think after reading this and SWT’s response, I’m starting to see exactly what everyone’s role in this was. The way TOs have been talking about Alan it seems like he was super aggressive to get them to work exclusively with Panda Cup, but it makes sense why - they were the licensed Nintendo event and likely had Nintendo breathing down their necks to make tournaments exclusively Panda Cup events. And with the broadcasting rights, Nintendo was sinking a decent amount of money into this partnership (as Alan said) and wasn’t just going to let BTS stream the events for free. They wanted to own the tournament/broadcasting scene and they were going to do anything to get it. And then at the last second, they tried to eliminate Panda’s biggest competitor SWT by claiming they don’t have a license. They just misjudged how hard the blowback would be to Panda Cup. TL;DR I don’t think Panda was maliciously trying to hurt the Smash scene, but their existence was a threat due to being Nintendo’s vehicle to monopolize the Smash tournament scene
i think it’s important to note that, though it might not be outright malice, there is definitely negligence / naivety on alan’s part. It seems like he entered a scene and ignored all of its history (Nintendo’s track record of interference) and concerns from TOs and other established community members who had more context. At best he was naively optimistic about Nintendo’s involvement with the Smash scene
This. This is what i have been thinking since the first statements came out. Nintendo has always wanted to have absolute control. But i want to add something. I think nintendo was actually trying to use panda to just end Smash competitive. Maybe panda tried to get to a point where that couldnt happen? In the end, panda could have done things properly or not, but nintendo would have done whatever the fuck they wanted. SWT closing down isnt panda's fault entirely cause they cant tell nintendo what to do. As simple as that imo. Over all the situation is so fucking weird, but so sad everything came out so bad.
what i i dont understand is why alan became the big bad guy here. he def is wrong for threatening people and trying to use inside knowledge to gain an upper hand, but at the end of the day nintendo is the one that actually caused SWT's cancellation. alan was just an opportunist who knew nintendo's plan and used it to push the panda cup
@@maneskinned he got nintendo involved with the scene when historically the scene has always tried to stay out of nintendo’s radar / active communication knowing this would happen
@@edhc94 fair, but it’s worth noting that Panda/Alan have been around for a long time (2017 IIRC). It’s not like he jumped into this whole mess without any idea of what he was getting into. The one thing I’m still struggling to understand is, what was Nintendo’s game here? Surely buying out the broadcasting rights for all these tournaments would be a drop in the bucket for them. So why go through all this trouble with Panda when they could buy the whole scene themselves?
Coming from the smash community I really didn't know much about this channel or the main channel in general besides finding out about it after the tournament you hosted. But honestly, I'm really impressed by the quality of your content and your style of journalism. You got yourself a new fan 👍
Now THIS is journalism... Thanks, Lud.
Small note about the Hotel situation: Even if they didn't block off rooms Downtown San Antonio and the area surrounding The San Antonio airport both have hundreds of hotels surrounding them anyway. Even if we take Alan's word for it, you're still probably going to get a better deal on a room within walking distance of the event if you booked something on your own.
I used to work for Marriott. We had at least 10 hotels in downtown San Antonio!
@@joywolf83 there’s a reason why Pax South ended up in San Antonio and why briefly SxSW thinking about moving to SA It’s just well suited for large events.
The BTS/Ken stuff isn't going to go anywhere. It was a conversation where each party will have negative accounts of the other. Any person "corroborating" Ken or Alan wasn't in the call and is just a friend of theirs trying to support that their friend is not who the other party paints them to be. I don't give any real weight to anything that a BTS member besides Ken has stated because realistically they are just repeating what Ken probably told them months ago.
That's what I've seen. Most of the corroboration is coming from them believing Ken's word about how he perceived the situation
With all these different moving parts, absolutely crazy. My big takeaway (besides Alan’s involvement of course.) and how I’ve always felt about Nintendo, is they are flat out antiquated. I just cannot for the life of me understand why they make everything so difficult. Nintendo hates positive PR and their fans apparently. It frustrates the hell out of me because their games are special and special to me as well. Thank you Lud, and to Charlie as well, for keeping these tournaments alive. I have a really fond memory of my first Smash tournament at my high school, and that thrill of getting 2nd is something I won’t forget!
hotbid has been part of every community I've been in and he's incredible and loved in all of them. All the way back to when TeamLiquid wasn't even a team but still just a brood war message board.
yeah that was SUPER sus. Hotbid is ANCIENT. He's been around since 2003. Like pretty sure if he had been sus at all in the past people would have known.
Hotbid is the original homie, you can't come in here and slander decades of dedication gtfo
Hot_Bid has been around since the BW days!~~!~! more than a decade ago!~!!~
Why can't he be both? People can be incredible and loved yet still be capable of being mean or rude to others that they perceive as different.
@@Chris-qh5tz Occam's razor. hotbid had been in the esports scene since 2003 and has worked with MLG, ESL, WCS, IPL, DreamHack, TL, Valve, BeyondTheSummit, and more as high ranking positions. There has never been any bad rep about him, and all of the projects hes done have been very good for their respective communities. He has done things across multiple major games, including Brood War, Starcraft 2, DotA2, and most recently Smash. Hotbid isn't just a "smash guy". His resume is huge. He's bigger than smash and he's been everywhere. If he was a bad person to work with, we would have heard about it from at least one of the scenes he's been apart of.
Those ending statements from Ludwig were absolutely beautiful
Thank you Lud for keeping us updated and explaining everything
I only had 28 minutes to read that and it left me at a huge cliffhanger. I’ll never know how this story ends now.
Fantastic video, well structured and covers a lot of points from both sides Looks like that journalism degree is paying off
My takaway is that Alan essentially wielded Nintendo as a club, trying to get good deals and wink-wink-nudge-nudge saying 'Nintendo might want to talk to you about those streaming rights if you don't agree to a deal that is favorable to me...' Now after all is said and done, he can of course claim he didn't **really** threaten anyone, he didnt **really** control Nintendo, etcetera. Which is of course technically true, but it completely ignores the fact that in these kind of negotiations, implications and wink-nudging is the norm and legal action is a last resort. He definitely isn't giving the full picture in his response.
the thing I come back to is that there were people who came forward and specifically mentioned that Alan was pulling a *wink* and *nudge* about Nintendo shutting things down.
Well, I did read the whole thing earlier today, and he does sound like an extreme narcissist to be honest, his vision was perfect, everyone is wrong except him, it's quite pathetic
Yeah, but the other takeaway is that there really isn't an obvious greedy or nefarious personal gain for doing this. In essence Alan motive could be that Nintendo holds the keys, Nintendo very well be clamping down all these unlicensed events regardless, and the only way forward is through a unified Panda umbrella of licensing and broadcasting control that legitimizes the professional scene to ad investors and Nintendo has say in. Smash gets to be elevated to other esports and he gets to be a defacto commissioner.
@@arcc4 ye, but it only works if you agree with the fact that the community needs nintendo, which it didnt for 20 years at this point. Basically he/panda created that concept by pushing to involve Nintendo, and it fucked everyone else
@@isthou The community DOES need Nintendo if they decide to start nuking every event that they don't sanction.
So before I watch this video, I really tried to understand his points. I understand why he is so emotional right now, but that really reflected in this document. Like his apology to BTS was very passive aggressive, and it felt like he wasn't taking any accountability for his part in that situation because he was too focused on his grudge with Ken. Most of the evidence also didn't seem to hold much weight. I think he probably would have been better off having someone help him write this, it seems like his emotional state resulted in this document lacking comprehension and focus.
I think that's a trap many people without PR reps fall into when making personal rebuttals to drama. It takes a long time, and multiple sets of eyes to look over what you've written and poke holes into it until it coherently tells the story you're trying to share. I understand that this was a rush job for him, but the general tone of him being the indignant, wronged party is the wrong approach to take to a community banging down your door no matter how vindicating it might feel. If he felt he was right, he should've taken enough time to engage with the staff he still had and his friends to give him honest feedback on where he fucked up so he could take ownership of it. But now the damage is done, and it started with his petulant 2 sentence summary accusing everyone else of lying. It sets the tone for everyone else replying to him in kind.
@@Astertane Because he basically got fucked over already and PandaGlobal is basically completely ruined. It is hard not to be emotional when from his perspective, the community basically self imploded on Panda for no reason other than TO's not liking Alan
@@YightLagami I recognise that it's tough not to act on your gut immediately, but the better statement for the company was the second one put out directly by Panda. There are clearly talented people working there who could've helped him save face, because the long-term success of the brand could have been rebuilt if it was handled in a way the Smash community could feel sympathetic to. Ludwig has done a far better job of making Alan look sympathetic than he did himself - which is a credit to Lud as a person for always waiting to hear someone out. If an effective game plan was put in place immediately for Alan to take a step back and for someone else to take control of company communications whilst he reflected and tried to rebuild his image then who knows what could've been possible.
I've seen several videos from many takes on this drama, and this has been the best one that sees it mostly objectively from all sides involved. Kudos to you.
We should have a collab on journalism and news between Lud and Charlie, something along the lines of "the moist mogul report"
Ok, from what i got: Alan had a plan to make the Smash scene legitimate, but went about it in the wrong way, in multiple ways, and that got us to where we are at rn. So overall i think Alan had a good cause and a good idea but a terrible way of going about it.
I have to say even watching Ludwig's take on what Alan said really made me sympathize with him. IMO how you should read this entire situation hinges on whether or not Alan was responsible for SWT getting cancelled or not. And even Ludwig said he doesn't think Alan has the power to actually do the cancelling, just that Alan had advance notice of what would happen. To me, if you put yourself in Alan's shoes, and you know ahead of time that the SWT framework is doomed to fail, and you also know that the scene would benefit from having a tour framework sanctioned by Nintendo, it is perfectly reasonable that you would go to each TO to inform them ahead of time bc theoretically all those events could get cancelled if they aren't sanctioned and it'd be in their best interests to be under the sanctioned Panda umbrella. I think Alan underestimated how poor it sounds coming from his mouth that his competitors VGBC (whom are an ingrained and trusted part of the community) are going to get shut down by Nintendo, how much people would want to stand by VGBC (as they should), and as a result of these two things how much they would distrust him and be unwilling to work with him. I think the rest of his behavior can be chalked up to miscommunication and the effects of his boiling frustration that no one in the scene wants to work with him. Imagine how things would have played out if instead of Alan being the messenger, it was Nintendo announcing that all events not sanctioned would be shutdown moving forward and that only Panda circuit events would be allowed. That would suck major ass, and it'd would be a fucking rough shake for VGBC, but in that scenario most TO's would probably move to become part of the Panda circuit on their own. I think Alan was probably doing what he thought was right for the community and I think this makes sense. Now it ALSO stands to benefit him as well, but that's not really his fault, he won the magical Nintendo lottery of becoming the org that they would sanction and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that he would benefit, so long as it was also mutually beneficial to the scene as well. BUT this reading only is fair if Alan wasn't in any way responsible for SWT getting cancelled. Ludwig didn't speculate on this too much, but when i watched Asmongold's reaction, he speculated that it'd be possible with Alan's connection to Nintendo to feed them misinformation about SWT or something of that ilk that would influence Nintendo to cancel them. So to me this situation is unclear, and will probably remain so. But if there is a perfectly reasonable and defensible explanation for what Alan did, he should not be getting called a 'video game villain' as obviously that's going to lead to severe harassment from bad actors.
Please make paragraphs lol
Really? It does the opposite for me. His entire response is shifting blame, creating conspiracy theories, and playing the victim. This response paints the picture of a spineless coward and pretty much confirms he was the dick in this situation.
This Mogul Mail guy is so amazing for informing us so elaborately about this situation. He should make a Podcast!
so much happening, so much more that we have to find out first before this whole situation can be put to an end.
keep the mogul mails coming please 🙌🏼
there's many news sources on youtube for stuff like this, but i find this channel to be the top tier best of relaying info. So much info and relayed info here it shames others channels just for trying for ad spots and fill with it ads, now this channel deserves my ad watch times, don't care if it get 30 ads here, well deserved.
I love this new content, it makes me feel like old 2020 Ludwig is coming back
Really appreciate this take. Not dogpiling for the sake of the east dunk but actually trying to understand one’s actions not in the lens of a cartoon villain but a real person who believes he’s doing the right thing. I can see where dude was coming from but given the history of the community that kinda of relationship with nintendo isn’t ready yet and he tried to force it a lil. Don’t think he’s a bad guy but maybe a bit over in his head. He’s like the relatable anime antagonist crine ima still laugh at da jokes tho cuz they’ve funny
Man as someone who's been in smash for a while the last speech gave me goosebumps
Alan basically decided he wanted to completely change the existing community to fit his vision and then got upset when people didn’t want to go along with it and couldn’t understand why. People like that are dangerous to community.
I'll make sure to tune in for the chessboxing event in march
I wish I had this type of journalism skill with the charisma. Great job bro thanks for helping us make sense of it all
This is a very good and nuanced take, I'm glad you took the time to get as much info as possible and give the benefit of the doubt to all sides
You know it’s finna be a crazy video when he has 1000 tabs open
Man that comment of trey lugging a crt to a tournament really got to me. It really brought me back to my college days in Australia. Smash will never die
The journalism degree actuallly coming in clutch rn story was covered very well and non-biased esspecially for someone so embeded and with so many smash conections.
Dr. Alan really was a pokemon antagonist
Phenomenally thought out, and Eloquently stated. I just wish you would’ve showed the hole in your ceiling when you said “you know I’ve been Swatted a couple times” that is all.
when the bad guy actually has a good reason for doing what he's doing
this is the best mogul mail you've ever done. i've been watching this channel since you made the "why i left twitch" vid and it's insane how much better it's gotten over this past year
i am so confused but i love having these on in the background
You should join with some other creators to buy a majority stake in panda and completely rebuild the company from the group up as a smash tournament organizer that works with ALL other tournament organizers.
I like that Mogul Mail is using their journalism degree, doing private interviews and actual reporting for a KZhead video. Mogul Mail really seems like a smart guy!
I like just being able to use the tabs at the top as a progress bar for the videos
the amount of effort that goes into collecting all the tabs and relevant info on these videos is crazy
This has been an insane saga
Important to note that Dhir the TO that Ludwig referenced a few times in this video was set to be the head TO for Panda Cup. The fact that he is siding with Ken over Alan should tell you a lot
That mogul moves hoodie is fire is that merch for the chess boxing event ???
Love the 30 minute Mogul Mail
Thank you Ludwig for everything you do for this community I appreciate so much