EVO Online details revealed with 5 weeks of events, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate removed from lineup
Skullgirls finally gets to be on the EVO mainstage in some fashion
With the cancellation of the main EVO 2020 event due to worries about the coronavirus pandemic, organizers have pivoted to move the event online with a newfound focus on fighting games with the best netplay around.
The first details for EVO Online have been revealed via an announcement trailer which will be split up over five weekends and features a very drastic change up to the events and games originally planned to take place.
Beginning July 4, EVO Online will begin hosting "special exhibitions and content" for EVO 2020's original lineup though there are apparently some big exceptions there.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the most entered game of EVO 2019 and head of the leaderboard for 2020 before it got cancelled, is no longer part of the list of games among the titles and is not shown at all in the trailer itself.
No reason was given for the change, but now the "main event" will focus on seven fighting games with Street Fighter 5: Champion Edition, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Samurai Shodown, Granblue Fantasy: Versus, Soul Calibur 6, Tekken 7 and Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r].
The tournament of champions bracket is still listed here as well, but Marvel vs. Capcom 2's logo is nowhere to be seen suggesting it is no longer part of the schedule as well. We don't know what EVO is going to do with the battle of its former Marvel winners, but perhaps they will be forced to move to Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 or Infinite — considering you can no longer buy MvC2 anywhere.
Even bigger than changing up the original list of games is the fact that EVO Online's open tournament events will be centered around titles not previously involved with the mainstage lineup with a focus seemingly put on the fighters with the best netplay features around.
Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath, Killer Instinct, Them's Fightin' Herds and Skullgirls 2nd Encore will make up the open brackets available, and they all have one thing in common: great rollback netcode.
One of the major questions and concerns going into EVO Online was the entire mainstage lineup runs on delay-based netcode except for Street Fighter 5 which had players concerned about the viability of running large-scale tournaments in that architecture.
The EVO organizers are apparently doing their best to side-step the issue entirely now by including those games with a higher standard of online functionality while keeping the original titles in some format.
No additional details have been revealed as to how the exhibitions and content are going to work for the mainstage lineup yet though more event and registration information will be announced in the near future.
While this does answer a good number of the FGC's questions about the logistics of running EVO in an online format, there's still some that need to be answered like the possibility of region-locking tournaments and the issue of prize money.
EVO Online will run every weekend from July 4–5 to the originally planned dates of July 31 through August 2. You can check out the full announcement trailer below.
