Smashboards Under New Ownership

Smashers,

After over a decade as it's steward, AlphaZealot will be stepping down as the owner of Smashboards. As of June 1st, 2023, his company Xyelot, LLC has sold Smashboards to Equistellar Media, Inc, a company owned by myself which will serve as the business entity for Smashboards and Squidboards going forward.

As long time members of the Smash community, both myself and AlphaZealot understand the importance of Smashboards and the history contained here. Ensuring it's longevity and survival was one of the guiding reasons he acquired the site from MLG in 2012 and is the reason I have chosen now to do the same.

If not for his efforts, I can say with certainty Smashboards would not still be here today.

Before I go into any details on any changes to the site itself, I'd like to share Chris' thoughts as both he and Smashboards enter a new chapter.

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AlphaZealot

Dear Smashboards Community,

After more than 10 years owning this passionate community, it’s time for me to move on so that I can focus on my career and soon to be growing family. I’d like to give a special thanks to all the moderators for nurturing the community these many years and keeping the site’s culture strong; without your support Smashboards would not be the special place that it is and new members would not be welcomed. And thank you, the Smashboards visitors, members, and premium members, who have kept this community alive for more than 20 years. Smashboards stands as one of the largest continually operating websites on the internet which is owed to the strength and history of the Smash community.

The new owner of Smashboards, effective June 1, 2023, is someone many of you know well – Warchamp7. Warchamp7 has been behind many of the sites upgrades and has been supporting the operations for nearly a decade – we first met during the late 2013 DDoS attacks and without his efforts we would not have gotten back online. With his expert advisement, we’ve maintained 99.999% uptime for over 8 years now and I know the site will be in good hands for the next 10 years with him looking over it.

Looking back – here are some milestones and numbers from this past decade:

• We Supported the launch of Smash Wii U, Smash 3DS, and Smash Ultimate and built new guides and character forums
• We migrated from vBulletin to Xenforo and refreshed the Smashboards branding
• We launched a news portal and added features like our top streams tab and events tab
• We launched and maintained a ranking system (now archived) that saw 23,408 ranked players from 16,456 local events, 1,002,574 matches
• We supported more than 150,000 new members who viewed the site more than 400 million times, contributed nearly 10 million posts of discussion, and browsed for more than 11 million hours
• We provided thousands in sponsorships to events like The Big House, CEO, Combo Breaker, and streamers like VGBootcamp

It’s bittersweet to say goodbye. Looking back it was nearly 20 years ago I joined the Smashboards community – I was in high school and was just learning that Super Smash Brothers Melee could be played at a deeper level. I wouldn’t have my career without first having discovered Smashboards – this site introduced me to video game tournaments and invited exciting discussions around rulesets and tournament formats in the early days of esports. The Smash community will always hold a special place in my heart as a result – please be good and support one another as the community coming together has always been it’s greatest strength.

Thank you and it’s been an honor to look after the site this past decade.

-Chris

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As we look forward, I aim to explore ways to allow Smashboards to better serve the Smash community as it continues to grow and evolve. I don't have any specifics to share right now but stay tuned in the coming months.

All transfers and updates have already been made, so there will be no downtime for the site. In the immediate future, there is only one actual change that will be happening to the site for our Premium users. As Smashboards is now under a new business entity, Premium payments will have to be updated as there is no process for us to transfer them.

If you currently have Premium, you will keep it until the original end of it's cycle after which it will not auto-renew. If you would to keep your Premium subscription and continue to support the site afterwards, you will need to subscribe again once it expires.

We appreciate all of you who allow us to keep the site running with your support!


I am excited to see what the future of Smash has in store for us and I am eternally grateful for Chris' leadership for the site as well as his other countless contributions to the Smash scene as a whole. I hope you'll join me in expressing my gratitude to him and wishing him and his wife well as they soon embark on a new journey as parents!

 

I'd like to thank Alpha for a decade of service, and I'm looking forward to seeing what's next for the site under new management!

 

You've done so much for this community, Chris. Thank you for all your years you've given us. I wish you and your family the best.

After knowing him for over 15 years (not a joke), I don't think there's a better person to lead than Warchamp7. I look forward to continuing to work with you.

 

Godspeed, old man. (plays stereotypical funeral bugle call)

 

Thanks for everything AZ

Warchamp7 this is your chance to finally turn the Pool Room into an actual pool.

 

Peace AZ . Sup warchamp. Just don't delete old threads. Put em in archive or something if the site changes up too much

 

Thanks for everything AZ

Warchamp7 this is your chance to finally turn the Pool Room into an actual pool.

oh shoot good idea

Peace AZ . Sup warchamp. Just don't delete old threads. Put em in archive or something if the site changes up too much

Nothing is going anywhere, don't you worry

 

Warchamp7

Now we can really REALLY blame you when the site is on fire.

 

Hoping my optimism isn't misplaced, kick names, take ass, play games and touch grass for us Warchamp

 

Logged in to say thank you for everything you've done for the community, AlphaZealot . It's incredible how much of an impact Smash has made on my life, largely due to the space that was built here. Smashboards is in good hands with Warchamp7 . Just don't ever take away Haunter.

 

warchamp can you add oysters

 

I dunno why, but I thought Warchamp was already the owner for the longest time.

 

I'm wondering if this is the reason why images are broken in my sig? They were working fine before today.

Anyways, congrats Warchamp, and good luck in your future endeavors, AZ!

 

I always thought Warchamp was the site's owner tbh, lmao.

 

Thanks for everything AlphaZealot .

 

Thanks for reminding me Squidboards exsists

 

Gg wp, AZ. <3
Gl hf, Warchamp. <3

 

Thank you alpha for your 10 years of helping this site be what it is today :]

 

I checked in cause I saw my premium was cancelled. You've been awesome AZ, smashboards wouldn't be the same without you

 

I wish you both the best, both AlphaZealot with his growing career and family and Warchamp7 with his new role as site owner. The efforts you worked towards in fostering this community have helped many of us find a place to belong here.