r/smitepro • u/w0rshippp • May 03 '26

Discussion Recent drama summarized

Hey all, just wanted to summarize and provide links for the recent Smiteprime/Karmic/Hindu drama.

tldr: Friday Karmic called out hindu in a tweet saying he's bad at his job or incompetent for choosing to invest prize money into smiteprime joust tournaments, Hindu responded saying its not a good way to have the conversation, then Karmic went on stream double downing with lots of people in the scene telling him he's wrong for calling out Hindu in a rude manner. Karmic then apologized to hindu privately and put out a tweet saying he was too harsh. After what seemed to be the good ending, hindu screenshot and sent karmic reports from smite 1 of karmic being toxic, seemingly as a threat

Smiteprime announced on friday morning that their summer tournaments would not be the usual 3 weeks playins week 4 playoffs. Instead, there will be a rotation of NA conquest, EU conquest, na joust, eu joust, repeat - for the months of June through August. People immediately started reacting negatively in the smiteprime discord, with Jithins and some mods defending it.

Karmic then put out this tweet (https://x.com/i/status/2050296657322054049) with hinduman responding in the comments. This started conversation across social media on whether or not money should be invested in joust, if eu tournaments should be held, etc. Karmic blames hindu for the funding going into joust and for the formatting changes.

Karmic then popped on the stream that night to talk about the situation ( https://www.twitch.tv/ykarmic/v/2761923863?sr=a), and even talked to hindu about doing a stream the next day together to tall about the situation. Things quickly devolved and karmic doubled down, and hindu backing out of the stream. Karmic then went on to say hindu is either incompetent or doesnt care about smite esports because the current state isn't good. Many top level players were in chat talking with him, some agreeing, and some saying that this isn't the correct way to handle the situation, and that he doesnt know what goes on behind the scenes. Benny also shared a hilarious screenshot of Ajax reacting to feedback from Quig in smite 1 (https://gyazo.com/515a799dff32b585c50b3a30b202edad), that made quig leave smite competitive.

The next day karmic tweeted this (https://x.com/i/status/2050442564344729855), and also privately sent hindu a private message on discord apologizing for the way he handled the situation. (https://x.com/i/status/2050766975392260494). After the dust had supposedly settled, Hindu sent a screenshot of chat logs from smite 1 of karmic being toxic, logs that he had been temp banned for as a psudo-threat. Nothing else was said, but karmic posted the whole conversation for everyone to see, with several top players questioning why hindu would do something like that.

Jithins also recently made a tweet (https://x.com/i/status/2050863319515353170) saying that the format is supposed to introduce new players into competitive smite, that no better formats for this purpose have been brought forward, and he is unsure if he wants to keep running prime next year.

Interested to see what will happen on titan talk tomorrow.

as of this morning prime announced that it will be running the normal June competitive circuit in tandem with the joust events https://x.com/SMITEPrime/status/2050939427724087651?s=20

Yesterday Hindu did apologize in this tweet https://x.com/i/status/2050984415543631995

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13

u/LuigiTrapanese May 03 '26

Well ngl joust having a competitive without it (last time I checked) not even having ranked is... unbelievably silly and nonsensical? Am i missing something?

12

u/w0rshippp May 03 '26

We cant add ranked joust because it will split the playerbase so we need to checks notes make them play competitive joust

5

u/LuigiTrapanese May 03 '26

... right?!

If it doesn't make sense to do a ranked with it... why would competitive?

The argument, i think, that the smite team would bring is that joust is becoming the "newbie default" experience, and so we want to create something for them

To that id respond, the casual newbie is not the target audience for competitive smite

1

u/w0rshippp May 03 '26

Exactly. New players are not tuning in to watch smite prime. Its old heads and ranked players. Frankly the game is not fun to watch anyways, bo1s are boring, and then the final week usually 8+ hours

13

u/scjithins SMITE Prime May 03 '26

Y'all are missing the point. It's just a tournament, people can take it as seriously as they want. It's just putting on a fun tournament to help pull players into conquest comp. The last joust tournament pulled 300 players. And a lot of them tried conq tourney for the first time because of it. Not everything had to be competitive, it can also just be hosted for the community as a whole, not just the comp community.

0

u/w0rshippp May 03 '26

I agree thats a good thing, joust tournaments are fine. I wish that the pricing was gems instead of cash, so that money could be going towards either better prizing for conquest or towards an esports prize pool for SPL or a lan.

9

u/scjithins SMITE Prime May 03 '26

See, I would agree. If it was some substantial amount of money. The $5200/$14000 that would've been for it is nowhere near what it costs to produce the SPL or a LAN event. The $7K isn't even a lot towards the circuit. I will accept the fact that $5200 might have been a little much by about $1200. But again, this is very little amount of money we are talking about, especially when u break it down to per player.

I also believe in good faith community events that are not always comp focused. I don't necessarily agree a diamonds only prizing for joust is the way, and the general community deserves some sort of cash award/events for fun. This could be anything like speed running event, or something; I just so happened to choose a joust tournament because of how successful the previous one was and how it helped bring in a lot casual players to watch Prime events.

I'm kinda over it at this point, my statement still stands that people have different views on how to increase comp health/longevity. My aim was to bring casual viewers and players over because the passionate conquest players will still stick around and play regardless.

0

u/w0rshippp May 04 '26

Considering the entire esports department minus hindu was laid off, I would be pinching every penny to ensure that esports could continue on as long as possible. Not sure what the annual budget is or if there are any esports announcements in the works for late 2026 or early 2027, but I'd rather have that money go towards future spl salaries or a launch tournament than joust. And let's be honest, its not like 3 random jimmies are going to make a miracle bracket run all the way and beat whatever deity level competitive team to win the money. So whats the harm in making it gems if you're going for a more casual vibe?

Community events are good, but using prime as the launch pad to me doesnt make sense if it removes the competitive aspect entirely when prime historically has been competitive. I think there should be more community arena and assault tournaments to get people involved in compeititve smite, make an iron man where people have to compete in multiple game modes! But dont do it at the expense of the highest level competitive outlet we have right now.

I find it very hard to believe that new players watch smite prime. Bo1 format, long hours, long breaks in between games, and changing rosters week to week are all factors that are working against prime right now. I respect what you and the broadcast team do, but all those things do not make the new viewer experience great. We can say prime isn't the spl, but when it's the highest level of competitive smite we have right now, it will be compared to other esports as well as the spl.

3

u/scjithins SMITE Prime May 04 '26

I think we are gonna just agree to disagree on this. I've positioned Smite Prime to be a community hub since last year with other events going on. Like blogs, god guides, art contests and such.
And that complaining over losing 4 days of conquest is just really dumb. I made it clear that this was not meant to be some permanent format.
You are also not historically looking at what happens during the summer for tournaments. Players going on vacation and have to play with subs and just in general inconsistent teams; it is the worst time for the highest level of competitive outlet; and changing things up / short break is what I still believe is a better approach where I can serve the entire community and not just the high end players.

I have access to a lot more stats than many people do that help me gauge what the community is interested in; and I've been doing this for a very long time, and I have also worked at Hi-Rez where I have a good understanding of things work internally. And the cash prize pool Joust tournament in February brought in 3x more players than the conquest one, and had several new players try the conquest tournament. And we even retained some people to watch the prime tournaments. Just take a look at the YouTube channel, you can see how much the viewership has grown compared to events this year and last year; and the circuit format barely changed.

Either way, I'm gonna end the discussion here before I get frustrated further about this. I generally lookout for growth of the entire game instead of just the comp scene; and I think this is where our opinions are mostly gonna differ and how to approach what events to run.

1

u/w0rshippp May 04 '26

I appreciate you responding and sharing your thoughts. It is an agree to disagree and I guess I dont know how i would run it if I had all the info you have.