Beyond The Summit Shutting Down Future Operations

Beyond the Summit is an organization behind many famous Smash events. These include the Summit series, Mainstage, and the Slippi Championships League. Unfortunately, today BTS announced that it is closing its doors. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Summit VI will still be happening and BTS plans to finish all active contracts. However, no other future operations will occur.

BTS was established in 2013 as a DOTA 2 organization. By 2015, BTS hosted their first Smash Summit for Super Smash Bros. Melee. Since then, BTS has hosted fourteen Melee Summits, six Smash Ultimate summits, the Mainstage series, and the first two seasons of the Slippi Championships league. Notably, Ultimate Summit 3 had the largest prize pool of any Ultimate tournament at $159,131. BTS has also hosted events for a variety of other games, such as Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Rocket League, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and more.

BTS founder LD talked about their ceasing of operations. They had expected 2023 to be a rough year for them, especially in the current economic climate on top of a rocky eSports environment. Over the past few weeks, it became clear that the current model would no longer be tenable. Ultimately, they had only two choices this year: Either they;d run the company into the ground or make sure everyone on the team had the best chance possible to find new work. They chose the latter. BTS’s staff will all be given two weeks salary, at least two weeks severance pay, and health care up until the end of April. BTS is also making a compiled document of all their former staff, their roles, and contact info to help them find new jobs in production or eSports.

The closing of BTS is heartbreaking for the Smash community. Community figures such as Alpharad, Axe, VoiD, Hungrybox, PewPewU, tkbreezy all expressed their sadness about the news. We on the Smashboards writing team wish all the former employees of BTS the best and thank them for their years of contributions towards making competitive Smash what it is today.

You can read LD’s full post on the closing of BTS below.

Sources

• LD's post about the closing of BTS
• Beyond The Summit's Website
• Former BTS worker spreadsheet
• Community responses: Alpharad, Axe, VoiD, Hungrybox (1) (2), PewPewU, tkbreezy

Credits

• Writing: TCT~Phantom
• Editing, Thumbnail, and Social Media: @Zerp

 

Definitely a big loss. I very much enjoyed their events and content.

 

Damn that sucks.

 

I sadly see this happening more often as economic woes deepen. Many jobs are being lost with only vague promises of future jobs opening. The kids who are now stepping into adulthood yet accustomed to the necessities of our current era are going to find themselves in a very tough spot unless things improve. This isn’t only an America issue but a global issue. Hoping for the best for those searching for jobs. Now is certainly not the time to be without a job. I’m glad the company went the high road and thought first of the employees rather than their own survival.