Brawlhalla Esports Year Nine is Exciting… and Disappointing

Changes are generally a good thing to have. Without changes, there is no movement forward. At the same time, living through the changes is difficult. It seems like the Brawlhalla community has taken this path. Could these changes in the esports scene lead to improvements for everyone involved? Or is it more like transformation to something else?

Brawlhalla Esports Year Nine was officially revealed during an official stream.

The competitive schedule is nicely shown in this picture.

The first thing to notice is that Seasonal Championships are replaced with Winter and Summer Circles, filled with official and community events.

The variety of tournaments is the exciting part. The schedule is just different, we certainly can adapt to it.

But let’s move to the disappointments.

The first one is a significant decrease of support for 2v2 tournaments. There will be four Championships in only three regions. No Doubles are planned for BCX 2024.

The biggest problem with this is that many players invested their time and energy specifically in 2v2 matches.

Furthermore. Do you remember the prize pool for a few previous competitive years? Yep, $1+M! It’s not like that anymore. The competitive players are disappointed. The reason is pretty understandable — being a professional in esports means doing it as a full-time job, dedicating yourself fully. But if this occupation doesn’t bring you money for living?

It feels like Brawlhalla takes the Smash turn towards supporting the casual play mainly. Competitive matches are rather a tool to attract more attention.

Content creation remains the only reliable income for the pros.

This decision did not bring a lot of positive feedback.

And here we have an elephant in the room. 2v2s and prize pools don’t create positive vibes for sure. But imagine being a competitive Brawlhalla player in Australia and finding out that your region is wiped out from the global competitive scene! All your effort and investment in the game has evaporated.

It’s also a very bad sign for everyone else in the Brawlhalla world. Sadly…

The prize pool money is still there, in Brawlhalla esports. The Midseason Championship offers $100,000 — it’s a LAN event, part of CEO 2024. To win a piece of this pie, players have to travel to the US, which is expensive and troublesome.

What do you think about this competitive year in Brawlhalla?