Bandai Namco announced this week that the company is rescheduling some of its competitive esports events taking place within the SoulCalibur and Tekken World Tours because of the Coronavirus. The publisher announced what it called a “difficult decision” this week by saying the upcoming events related to each game will be changed as far as the official World Tour is concerned. Some events will continue in their planned venues despite no longer being considered to be World Tour qualifying rounds while other events are planned to be rescheduled with no new date in sight for when they might take place.
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The statement about the World Tour reschedulings was shared by Bandai Namco on Twitter as well as through each game’s respective esports site. Bandai Namco directly referenced the Coronavirus as many others have done during their announcements and said it’d have more information to share as those details become available.
“After careful deliberation, we have made the difficult decision to reschedule the upcoming TEKKEN World Tour 2020 (TWT2020) and SOULCALIBUR World Tour 2020 (SCWT2020) events due to continued concerns regarding the COVID-19 Coronavirus,” Bandia Namco said. “Effective immediately, Norcal regionals and Final Round will be removed as official qualifying rounds for TWT2020 and SCWT2020 respectively with more information to come regarding The Mixup.”
Please visit https://t.co/ijbwoioOUd and https://t.co/MVALgBJyil for more details. pic.twitter.com/J97QYdQb9A
— BANDAI NAMCO ESPORTS (@BNEesports) March 6, 2020
The SoulCalibur and Tekken sites, respectively, say the Final Round and Norcal Regionals will continue without being World Tour qualifying rounds nor will they have Bandai Namco’s involvement. The Mixup event which involves both games was supposed to take place on April 18th, but it’s now been rescheduled to a later date.
“We deeply apologize for any difficulty this will cause players and staff of these events,” Bandai Namco said. “We understand that everyone is excited to compete in both World Tours and we are equally excited to share that passion with you. This is not a decision we take lightly and the safety and security of the community is of the utmost importance to us.”
Bandai Namco’s announcement comes after numerous other companies have also announced cancelled or at least revised plans for their competitive events. Psyonix, for example, just recently cancelled the live Rocket League event for the game’s World Championship.
