By Considering the current state of the world, it came as no surprise when Evo announced it was canceling its main event and moving to an online format for 2020. There was one question on everyone’s minds though. How was, what is arguably the most prestigious FGC tournament, going to handle the garbage netplay from some of it’s biggest titles?
Well we finally have an answer to that. They simply aren’t…
The Plan for Evo Online
Evo Online will be held over the course of five weekends, from July 4th to August 2nd. As well as holding exhibitions for its original tournament lineup, Evo will be hosting four, open online tournaments with a separate lineup. The list of games for the open tournaments are as follows:
- Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath
- Killer Instinct
- Thems Fightin’ Herds
- Skull Girls 2nd Encore
If you’re wondering why they chose just those four games specifically to host tournaments for, it’s because they all have something in common. They all have great, rollback netcode, making them ideal for hosting an online tournament.
A Certain Game is Missing
You may have noticed that Smash Ultimate is missing from both the exhibition and the tournament list. That probably has to do with the fact that Smash has notoriously horrendous netcode, even amongst other games with terrible online. Still that’s just speculation, and even considering that, it’s surprising that Evo was willing to drop the game that had the most viewership and brought it over 3,000 entrants in 2019.
Honestly, companies like Nintendo and Capcom should be embarrassed that their Triple A titles were snubbed by indie games with better netcode at Evo. Hopefully this serves as a wakeup call for them, but I’m not holding my breath, especially for Nintendo.
And no disrespect meant to the developers of Them Fightin Herds and Skullgirls. They deserve tremendous respect for actually making their games works properly, and I hope they do well at Evo this year.
As of now, there’s no news as to when registration for Eco Online will open, but we’ll keep you posted.
