🇵🇸 Allie "SmashCapps" Cat ♿ · @Linnturong
25th Nov 2020 from TwitLonger
Full details on Project M and Nintendo + Twitch's @ Apex 2015 Deal #SaveSmash
All of these details come from an interview I recorded with Alex Strife on September 12th, 2015. This was at least 7 months since Apex 2015 took place. I have removed the parts about him discussing what happened to victims though he did say, "I'm not going to sit here and say "this person lied" because there were no lies." He fully admitted to what he did.
With this out of the way, the rest of this Twitlonger contains any direct quotes about the situation that were contained in the interview. There was way more here than even I remembered. None of it is good.
Once again, I have removed specific names as I don't want to start a dogpile on someone when the community needs solidarity. (Not to mention, those folks likely did what they needed to do and even what they felt was best. They got tricked too. Remember that.)
Also, even if quotes were awkward, or run-on sentences, I didn't mess with them. I only added a few things to help readability, which are in parenthesis. Let's get to it.
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There's a few things the community needs to know that Twitch did. These are things I never released. These are things that even some of the people involved (don't) know. And this may have caused certain pain to people.
The decision to not have Project M at the event was mostly Twitch's decision. With their promise of them, themselves, getting us Nintendo. That's all it really was about, that's all I cared about. And it wasn't because I wanted to screw over that community and everyone knows that.
I tried to find little loopholes and everything to do it but Twitch just kept saying no, Twitch kept saying you have to do this, you have to do that. And I sat there and I said look, regardless, there's no person on this planet that gives a damn about the future (of Smash) that wouldn't not want to take it to the next level. That's all I wanted to do. So I said fine, and they started throwing money.
Twitch was supposed to pay us a lot of money. I won't disclose the amount, but it's a lot. As of today, they have not paid at least 15k of it. All the money, all the things that Twitch supposedly paid for at the event, was not paid for by Twitch. It was paid for using money we had that was promised to be reimbursed by Twitch. Twitch took all the credit. Twitch did a lot of things wrong.
If you want to know why there's not Project M on certain streams, those streams were paid by Twitch and have are continued to be paid so they can pay their own quote on quote "bills" and their own quote on quote "reparations" for (not streaming) the game. So people were paid reparations for that and after that fact, the whole Project M handling was because Twitch said in confidence we don't want to upset the community by removing it, so you guys handle this and we'll take care of you. That was the agreement made behind closed doors.
When [blank] got paid, a bunch of other people wanted to get paid, and I don't know what happened to the rest of them but I know [blank] got paid. At the very least, [blank] was finalizing the deal to sign with them. Whether that money was eventually distributed, I don't know, I don't have access to their bank account.
And it wasn't like they did anything wrong, the people who executed what Twitch asked them to, it's just Twitch is holding out on money. The head of quote on quote Smash had been darting around it obviously for his own personal gain. We already know this, we know who he's affiliated with. There are people who lied, to me, and to twitch, and to me in front of Twitch, about certain things. There are a lot of people who did some backhanded things. There are stories they said that (were like),"'Oh no, we're just waiting for Nintendo to get back to us."
[blank] said Nintendo wants me to do it, and I'm like yeah sure. Twitch is like, "oh we want to keep doing it, we want to build up the community, we want to get bigger and bigger" and I'm like, no you don't. Twitch doesn't give a shit about this community and I can tell you that for a fact. They claim they give a shit about everybody but they don't. They are a company like anybody else and if they're afraid to make a decision they will do it behind closed doors. And then, let somebody else take the fall. Which is what they did to me. They wanted us to take all the heat for the Project M bullshit, and then would just say "well we're just doing what we're told."
When in fact they wanted the whole thing. When they met twitch because we were supposed to have a meeting with twitch cuz in the end Nintendo came to us, Nintendo didn't come from their (Twitch's) side. Nintendo came to us straight. As soon as we got into a call with Nintendo, Twitch wanted to be in the call. They always wanted to be in the call. Eventually we gave in and said okay, you'll be in the call.
They immediately started asking about money and product deals and all this other fucking nonsense. And Nintendo, and the Nintendo rep, [blank], who's nice guy, who I wish I could have met him in person to thank him, he was like "you should talk to the people you're supposed to talk to" and they were like "no, we want to talk to you, we want an answer." And I was like why the fuck are you guys doing this right now? Why are you making it about you when you should be making it about the event.?
When I was eventually out of the tournament for everything I did, I wanted it to end for good. Twitch still wanted to do it because they wanted a multi-year agreement to it. So I obeyed, I didn't want to make a mistake.
So yeah, that's all there, and that's all never been told.
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That's all I have that is relevant. From this, it becomes very clear the kind of shenanigans that were going on behind the scenes, how Twitch thought they had a big deal and money to offer then suddenly didn't have it thanks to Nintendo. Hints at the circuit being formed at the time too. Now Twitch isn't innocent either, they did some bad stuff, but Nintendo was putting pressure on and pulling the strings.
That's all I have for you besides more speculation. I hope it's helpful or at the very least informative.