Smash pros really don’t need to keep proving they cared about HAX$

Passionate Super Smash Bros. Melee player Aziz “HAX$” Al-Yami passed away earlier this year at just 30 years old after spending years begging the Smash scene to allow him to compete and be a part of the community again. It’s a tragedy, but I think the community needs to give the holier-than-thou stuff a rest.

HAX$ uploaded a two-hour-long video to YouTube called “Evidence.zip 2” back in 2021 that outlined all of the reasons he felt William “Leffen” Hjelte was manipulating and damaging the Smash community. While Leffen is known for being quite toxic in the community, he won most of the Smash community’s sympathy when he said he no longer felt safe at events due to HAX$ erratic and manic behavior as time went on. As a result, HAX$ was banned from tournaments.

And that’s the thing I want to highlight here. Smash doesn’t have an official, regulated ecosystem like League of Legends or Counter-Strike 2. Instead, Smash has a collection of individually run tournaments that all have their own rules and guidelines. And all of these tournaments banned HAX$ because the community — who largely controls what tournaments do — insisted on it.

For years, the Smash community called HAX$ crazy (and worse), taunted him for being unstable, and were very vocal about him being toxic. But after HAX$ passed away, the Smash community has made it their ongoing mission to shame Smash pros for not supporting HAX$ — for not standing up for him (against themselves, apparently) — and it really feels performative to me.

X (formerly Twitter) has become an echo chamber of Smash players constantly tweeting about how beloved HAX$ was and how evil Smash pros and tournament organizers are for allegedly shunning him. You know, despite being the ones who shunned him to begin with. Who forced tournaments and pros to abandon him.

But I guess it makes them feel better about their own involvement in his demise.

In the past few months, Smash pros had to basically announce their secret ongoing support for HAX$ (including Juan “Hungrybox” DeBiedma even flying out to see his family) in order to silence players. You know, the players that basically forced the pros to be private about their support for HAX$ to not face the same harassment that was aimed at HAX$.

Most recently, Cody Schwab released some extensive Google Doc outlining how he had actually been on HAX$ side this entire time. At one point he even writes: “I also felt the ban had gotten out of hand at this point and he should just be given a chance to play, so I personally started talking to TOs for him just to vouch and say yeah he’s not a problem, give him a shot, etc. to make sure he could be back in 2024. The first two of these were Arcamelee and Santa Paws at the end of 2023.”

By 2024, HAX$ was allegedly writing to Cody daily. “At least 90% of players” wanted him back around this time, but it seemed pretty difficult to reverse a perma-ban. However, HAX$ was starting to reach a breaking point, threatening to self harm, so it was starting to alarm a lot of pros in the scene.

In response to the massive document, the Smash community continued to heckle Cody and claim he was complicit in what happened to HAX$ in the end.

My thoughts? I don’t really care all too much if Cody was truly a reason for HAX$’ death or not. I just want the Smash community to stop pretending they are innocent. The same people harassing pros about their involvement with HAX$ death are the ones who previously harassed HAX$ himself. What is continuously telling pros that they should have boycotted events going to do now? What are you hoping will happen?

Everyone piles on Cody these days, but look how the Smash community responded when HAX$ called him out for being a liar back in 2021.