Some sad news comes from Nintendo today that Nintendo Live 2024 Tokyo is canceled, along with the Splatoon 2023 finals and 2024 world championship events getting postponed. This is due to increasing safety concerns after multiple threats appeared toward employees and spectators.
To keep everybody involved safe, the company made the hard decision to cancel the Live event and postpone the Splatoon Koshein National Finds, due to take place at the Ota-Ku General Gymnasium on December 16 and 17, 2023.
According to Nintendo, it has ‘persistently been receiving threats’ targeting event staff, Nintendo employees, and more recently, people planning to spectate the events. It’s unclear where these threats are coming from, but still a scary fact that they even exist.
This has a knock-on effect that the Splatoon World Championships 2024 scheduled to run at Nintendo Live on January 20 and 21, 2024, are also postponed. Nintendo will release details as to when and where these events will take place in the future.
The Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Online Challenge Final Stage and World Championships 2024 also face postponement for the same reasons. Sakurai himself shared his sentiments on X, saying “The reason for the cancelation is said to be an act of intimidation. […]My heart sinks when I think of the people who were running the project”.
We hope everyone remains safe, and that these events can go ahead in the future safely as planned. In the meantime, you can hop into the next Splatoon 3 Splatfest to get your ink fix and try out all the Mario Kart characters available in the game.