Nintendo has stripped the team that won the recent 2024 Splatoon 3 World Championships of its first place win following evidence of racist behaviour from “certain members of team Jackpot”.
In an official statement released by the official Nintendo Versus account on Twitter, the company said that the North American team’s win “will be considered vacated” and team members will not receive trophies.
Nintendo’s revokement statement references Jackpot’s breaking of community guidelines without going into specifics, but a Reddit thread from last month — which has since been updated with additional information from other sources — details racist behaviour from team members on social media and while streaming the game. A thread by @adaptability_ (which contains swearing) from 11th June details several examples, including the use of racist slurs and multiple instances of comparing black people to monkeys.
One member of team Jackpot, Jared, has responded in a Google document where he specifically addressed several instances of racist behaviour amongst the team and apologised for his part. “I know a lot of people looked up to us, Jackpot, and me personally,” he wrote. “I’m sorry that I let you all down.”
The Splatoon 3 World Championship 2024 took place in Japan in April. Japanese team Phantom Thief placed second in the tournament. It’s unclear at present if they will be awarded first place following Jackpot’s removal.
The Splashtag banner referenced features the winning team’s player characters and was made available to all players for free back in June following the team’s win. The tweets referencing the Jackpot banner from both the SplatoonNA and Nintendo of America accounts have been deleted and, as detailed in the statement above, the banner itself will be removed from the game via an update.
Source: nintendolife
