I know you work really hard to make this event succeed, and I have a lot of respect for anyone in that position, but I can say with 100% certainty that Ouch!? would not intentionally break the rules like this to gain an advantage, especially not for Smash 4 Doubles of all things. If he says they cleared it with the person in charge of their bracket before they did anything, I'm inclined to believe him over the word of a TO who seemed almost gleeful at the prospect of "getting to send [players] home" and making them "meet [your] wrath" (see screenshot #1). Just because your bracket staff didn't post about it in the Discord doesn't mean the interaction didn't happen, and it's not hard to imagine a scenario where a pool captain would give verbal approval for something like this under the assumption that it's really not a big deal. Should the players have done this in the first place? Of course not. Should the pool captain who cleared it have passed it up the chain to get an answer from someone on the core team? Absolutely! But it is asinine to feel justified in kicking everyone involved out of ALL of their brackets over it, 2 days after the incident occurred, and including the player who did nothing but have someone else use his tag! Tell me how that makes any sense at all? When the head of the entire event agrees with the players that this was the wrong decision (see screenshot #2), I don't see how you can still defend your actions here. You can say that players should not have listened to their pool captains, but asking the person running your bracket questions about how things work and what you're allowed to do is EXACTLY what they're there for. It speaks to a fundamental issue with how the bracket team is treated at this event to talk about them like they don't have the knowledge or the agency to inform players of the rules of the event they are helping run. Are you not doing training sessions with staff before the event? Are you not providing them with easy access to the tournament rules for reference? Are you not giving them a clear outline of what to do and who to come to in the case of questions or concerns? From the person who was complaining about low volunteer numbers earlier this weekend, and reveling in the idea of reducing the number of events players can enter or cutting Doubles entirely to compensate "because fuck Doubles" (see screenshot #3), I have a hard time taking your word at face value here. If you're offering pay per shift in addition to other perks, these aren't volunteers. They're staff members, and you need to train them and treat them as such. Imagine someone coming to Supernova as their first tournament, asking their pool captain for clarification when they're unsure of the rules, and getting told 2 days later that they're being kicked out of the event for listening to what said pool captain told them. But too bad, that's on them for trusting the person you tasked with helping them navigate their bracket, right? I thought it was an issue with marketing and outreach when you were talking about volunteer numbers the other day, but now I'm picking up that there might be another issue entirely at play here. You claim that there weren't even any TOs in the building on Thursday other than Cagt, File, and yourself (see screenshot #4), and that none of you were aware of this, but then who was running the bracket? Who were these players reporting their scores to? You're telling me that that individual didn't know who these well-known, highly-seeded players were? If there were no other TOs in the entire building, as you say, why did you make a point to "check the entire Discord conversation" as you claim in your post above? You can't have it both ways, either you were directly involved with running this pool and were oblivious to what was happening until 2 days later when you decided to retroactively do something about it, or there were other people the players could have asked that you're not mentioning. Even after all this, I can sympathize with the stressful position you're in, and I don't envy having to deal with all of this in the middle of trying to run a massive supermajor. I don't fault you for dispensing justice in the case of a breach of the rules, and removing players from a bracket that they didn't enter is more than reasonable, especially when you suspect malice. However, doubling down when more information comes out and refusing to acknowledge any wrongdoing here is not it, man. It's one thing to make a snap decision in the heat of the moment, but I can't wrap my head around taking 48 hours to make such a disproportionally extreme ruling in a completely separate bracket to players who demonstrably tried to do the right thing while playing in the chill Thursday brackets. Even if you deleted them now, to come on here and make self-righteous posts about sending players home and making them meet your wrath spits in the face of all the hard work the rest of the team does to make events like this enjoyable, and the attendees who pay hundreds of dollars and travel from all over the world to attend them. There is zero justification for a high-level staff member who represents the tournament to speak about its volunteers, its attendees, and its brackets with so much disdain and reckless abandon. I hope, after the stress of Supernova has subsided, you're able to reflect on why the reaction to this incident got so blown out of proportion and use it to rethink some of the processes in place, not just for staffing and tournament logistics, but also for your approach to public relations, crisis management, and dispensing of justice. At the end of the day, we're all a part of the same community and we all want to do our best and have a good time. As long as we remember that and use it to guide us instead of being fueled by hate and spiteful retribution, we can accomplish some great things. My DMs are open if you ever want to talk more in the future, and I wish you the best of luck with the remainder of the event.

Extremely disappointing to see this decision from @SuperSmashCon. I understand the need to shut down instances of alting when players are being malicious and trying to manipulate seeding, but this is not one of those cases and there are so many problems with how it was handled. For starters, it’s been confirmed that the players checked with their pool captains before they did anything, and they got explicit approval to make the swaps that they did. This alone should remove any fault from the players, as it’s on the event to ensure their staff knows the rules. No one should ever be DQ’d for something they got permission from tournament staff to do. Also, considering this all took place 2 days ago during the Thursday Smash 4 brackets, it’s insane to punish all the players involved by removing them from their other brackets in a completely unrelated game, almost 48 hours later. Not to mention the now-deleted post from @TheRoflfox (screenshot below) about how the players “met [his] wrath,” which 100% comes across as a vindictive power trip rather than an altruistic decision to protect the competitive integrity of the event. If you ask me, DQing multiple high seeds deep into the bracket does a lot more damage to the event’s competitive integrity than the fact that those players competed under other people’s tags in a 45-entrant bracket that ended 2 days ago. I feel especially bad for RiskTKR, whose only crime was doing the right thing by letting staff know that he wasn’t going to make it to his Thursday pools on time, only to get punished when the Ultimate TO found out someone else played under his tag. It also sucks to see him, Ouch!?, and VaLoR get screwed out of Ultimate Singles when it’s arguably the most important bracket they entered and they all travelled across the continent to make it to the event. I hope the event organizers are able to do something to compensate the players for this overstep and implement some changes to their tournament staff operations to ensure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. There’s no reason a pool captain should be able to make an executive decision that it takes 2 days for the head TO to find out about and overturn. I’m very disappointed as a fan who was looking forward to watching my region’s best player compete at such a prestigious event, and I can’t imagine how the players must feel in this situation.