Right now, there’s an event for fighting games like Super Smash Bros happening in the USA: the CEO Dreamland 2020. Two participants have now been banned for life. They had spread fears about the corona virus – apparently they found it funny, says the organizer.
This is what the event is about: The “CEO Dreamland” event takes place in Orlando, Florida. It started on March 13 and is supposed to end today. The event is themed around Nintendo. Various tournaments for the “Super Smash Bros.” series are taking place, plus some Mario Kart and Mario Party 2. With Brawlhalla , another fighting game is being indulged in.
The tournament was supposed to be part of the “Smash World Tour 2020”, an eSports series, but was removed at short notice – due to concerns about the coronavirus. Nevertheless, the event is taking place this weekend.
This is the trouble: Rumors surfaced on social media that one of the participants in the “Super Smash Bros” tournament was showing signs of being infected with the coronavirus, yet still planned to participate in the tournament.
This caused unrest, especially since numerous events were canceled around the Orlando event. The leagues in LoL are on pause, for example. Participants were concerned about the risk of possibly getting infected.
As can be seen from tweets by participants, the event is well attended and people are sitting and standing closely together:
“I have the coronavirus and I still play” as a prank
This was the reaction: Community members like pro player Jon “Sol” Lackey followed up on these rumors to find out if there was any truth to the infections.
The chief organizer of the tournament, Alex Jebailey, has now released a statement. According to him, the rumors that two Dreamland participants were infected with the coronavirus are fake. He determined this after speaking with them and the officials at the hotel. According to Jebailey:
- one of the original posters of the rumor was not even registered for the event. He had fabricated his alleged illness as a “joke”.
- they also spoke with the other poster and made it clear that the coronavirus is not something to joke about. The second poster is asymptomatic and has not been tested.
This is the result now: The CEO Dreamland 2020 is supposed to continue as planned.
The two who posted about their “corona” illness are no longer welcome at CEO events and are thus banned for life.
For the organizers, it seems to be an enormous stress to carry out the tournament during these virus times. This is not just organizational stress, but also financial stress. The organizers have submitted a donation option and said: The tournament was planned and paid for before refunds due to Covid-19 came in. Therefore, they are likely under significant financial strain.
- In summer 2019, during a heatwave, a player died at a fighting game tournament in New York. At that time, accusations against the organizers arose.
- The eSports in Super Smash Bros writes exciting stories: A 15-year-old girl defeated a seasoned veteran and had to deal with a lot of backlash for it.
The title image is from the Twitter account of CEO Gaming.org.
