Minecraft Steve Is Once Again At The Front Of 'Smash' Players Minds As Discussions Regarding Banning The Character Heat Up

June 21st, 2022 - 11:59 AM EDT by Adam Downer

6 comments | Contact Newsroom

steve exploding Twitter

How do you solve a problem like Minecraft Steve?

That question has been lingering in the back of the Super Smash Brothers Ultimate community's collective mind for months but was thrust to the forefront of discussion after last weekend's "Gimvitational" tournament in which a young Steve player, Japanese phenom Acola, won the event, while another, Yonni, reached fifth place. Both of them scored major upsets against established veterans in the process.


Throughout the event, it was clear that the character's tools greatly outshone those of its foes. Both Yonni and Acola were able to use Steve's ability to create terrain to effectively edge-guard opponents, and both utilized Steve's multiple strong kill moves, particularly with the diamond pickaxe, to secure early stocks. A player taking 80% damage from a single, basic Steve combo was a common sight, as were stocks lost incredibly early to Steve's plethora of powerful attacks, not to mention his mine cart attack which also acts as a command grab.


After the event, four of the attendees — competitors Marss, Light and Cosmos and caster L4st — tweeted the hashtags "#BanSteve #Please."


Some of that group later indicated that they were merely trolling the ever-hysteric Smash fanbase, but it nevertheless started the ball rolling on some of the most serious discussion regarding banning the character from competitive play seen thus far.

Those in favor of banning the character argued that the character has too many effective tools in regard to the rest of the cast, such as his ability to conjure blocks out of thin air to mess up recoveries and protect himself. This also heavily skews the "risk-reward" factor of every Steve interaction heavily in Steve's favor. This means that if a player attempts to hit Steve with an attack and Steve blocks or avoids the attack, it's likely Steve will rack up high damage and perhaps a kill, while the other player would likely have only racked up mild damage numbers.


They also argued that as players of the characters grow more knowledgable, he has the potential to dominate the game's meta by making all characters who can't effectively fight him unviable. Similar situations happened with Bayonetta in Smash 4 and Meta Knight in Brawl, and those characters' eventual dominance of their respective games is often cited as a reason why those games are not popularly played anymore.


Those against a ban felt calls for a ban were hyperbolic, arguing that there was effective counterplay against Steve and that the character had not yet put up results comparable to Smash 4's Bayo and Brawl's Meta Knight.


A simple solution to the Steve issue would be for Nintendo to patch the game with alterations that make the character less powerful (aka "Nerfing" him), as they'd done with Smash 4's Bayonetta towards the end of that game's lifespan. While Nintendo has stated there will be no more patches for Ultimate, a so-called "emergency" patch regarding Steve and potentially other characters is not out of the realm of possibility.

At any rate, the ever-polarized Smash community seems far from reaching a consensus on the so-called Steve problem for now. However, if the character begins to dominate the game as intensely as some of his critics fear, a consensus on banning the character may come too late.



+ Add a Comment

Comments (6)


Display Comments

Add a Comment


Hey! You must login or signup first!