Smash Bros pro gets death threats for playing as Minecraft Steve at tournament

A Smash Bros pro has received an alarming amount of death threats for using the controversial character, Minecraft Steve in a recent tournament.

Super Smash Bros has to be one of the biggest competitive scenes in all of gaming, and tends to get pretty heated. With tournaments held since the series’ debut with Super Smash Bros for the Nintendo 64. There have been several tournaments since, spanning basically every game in the franchise, with popular entries being Super Smash Bros Melee for GameCube and Super Smash Bros Ultimate for Nintendo Switch.

Character selection is everything during these competitive matches, with players needing to know their “main’s” moveset inside and out, as well as evasive moves to stay in the match longer. While practically every character is viable for competitive games if the player is skilled enough, some are definitely more effective than others, and some are downright broken to play.

One of these characters is the Smash Bros Ultimate DLC addition, Steve from Minecraft, who many high-level players consider to be overpowered. Steve has the ability to place blocks all over the arena, which makes a great defense and minimises the space the opponent has to move around in. He can also enhance his own attacks by mining materials, has a good stage recovery move and a few other tricks. A professional Steve player can be hell to fight against, which is why many have called for him to be banned from the competitive scene.

Steve is so hated, that a Smash Bros pro, Angel ‘Onin’ Mireles, received death threats for playing as him during the recent Crown the Third super major tournament. Onin didn’t even win the competition, placing fourth overall, but still riled up many members of the Smash community with his main.

Onin shared a now-deleted tweet to his followers that said: “And so it starts…” featuring an example of the vile messages he was receiving. It got so bad that he had to temporarily close his direct messages, but eventually shrugged off the hate saying: “Weirdos will be weirdos but thank you to all my friends who tell me I’m awesome I’m a nice kid I promise plz learn how to differentiate player to character hate…”

Regardless of how frustrating a character is in a game, threats of death and violence obviously have no place in the competitive community. Luckily the majority of Smash players condemned the haters, and offered their support to Onin.

“Man, like why are people like this. Yeah I hate Steve, but they’re just people trying an optimal strategy in a video game for money, get over it.”

“It's a videogame man, people need to grow the hell up. The people sending death threats or hurting people over a CHARACTER in a videogame are the ones that ruin the game and community for everyone.”

“I've never seen a character that 1 guy wins tournaments with get this much hate.”