'Super Smash Bros.' tournament organizer sells his own house to keep things running

Not every business decision turns out to be a success, and sometimes that really, really, really sucks.

Michael "FullMetal" Buchheit, the organizer of the Super Smash Bros. tournament series Tipped Off, organized his twelfth Tipped Off set to go down in Georgia this weekend. But unlike previous years, not enough people signed up to cover the costs of hosting the tournament, Kotaku reported today.

In order to pay for everything, Buchheit had to sell his house.

Tipped Off has been running since 2006, back when the only serious competitive Smash game on the docket in most circles was Melee. Since then, the scene has blown up in extraordinary fashion, with about a dozen high-profile tournaments dotting the U.S. alone each year.

This means that less-frequent tournaments like Tipped Off -- despite their storied histories in the competitive Smash scene -- don't attract the same numbers that they used to.

"Sometimes reputation doesn’t mean anything," he told Kotaku. "It doesn’t matter that we’ve been holding it down for, like, 10 years. If someone joined the scene in 2016, they have no knowledge to make a judgment on whether or not they should go to this event. There’s just so many high-quality events."

Unfortunately for Buchheit, this exact situation happened to Tipped Off 12, which he told Kotaku attracted 325 attendees for Melee, Smash 4, and Project M competitions. He needed about 600 attendees to break even, but canceling the event would've still cost him about $12,000, because he already booked the event space and hired streamers to broadcast the competition.

To continue onward with the tournament, Buchheit would lose about $15,000. He decided to take that route, selling his house to cover the costs.

On Nov. 1, Buchheit posted about the sale of his house on Facebook, saying it will give him the money he needs to pay for Tipped Off 12.

Buchheit told Kotaku that some members of the Smash community offered to support him and sent him $600 on PayPal.

"I wasn’t going to ask for crowdfunding to bail me out," he told Kotaku. "I have the money in hand from the sale of my house, so it’s not like the event won’t happen without support. It’ll just be a loss."

Buchheit told Kotaku that unless he gets a big commitment from the community to support and attend another event he puts on, there may not be a Tipped Off 13.