Alex Strife

Hi everyone, it's Chibo. For those of you who don't know me, I run CLASH Tournaments, have been a staff member of Apex since roughly around Apex 2010, and taking a very large role starting in preparation of Apex 2012. In such time of being in the Smash community, I have known Strife for quite a while, and have been quite close with him as a friend in the past. Due to the sheer amount of activities I have been involved with in the communities and the amount of work I have done with Strife, I know some of the most terrible, embarrassing, and disgusting things that this person has done to our community. I have held onto my stories for years, hiding most stuff completely in the dark, sharing some stories with others privately, though it's time for me to share everything I know. Some of this may be public knowledge to some, and some of it will be news to others.

==TL;DR at the bottom==
You'll want to keep reading though.

Many people have their own Strife stories to tell. I have consoled and listened to others explain their side, yet many haven't come forward with everything  they know. It may be the status of Strife in our community, it may be because they wanted to hold onto Apex for their personal gain. Thankfully, the trend to step up and share their story truly began tonight. Reddit has seen these posts with information by @kaytheproblem, followed up by Kiwi, pidgezeroone (one of this very Reddit's moderators - u/MoonbasesYourComment), and most recently, my girlfriend and fellow player Nyani (http://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/2t1cq1/the_truth_about_alex_strife_part_2_nyani_edition/). I have come dangerously close to saying everything I am about to, but hid it in fear that Strife would use my girlfriend as retaliation ammo against me. She has bravely stood up and said her side of the story, so I won't be touching on that, and will be sharing everything I know.

Unfortunately, I do not have THAT much proof for everything I am about to say. I do have screenshot evidence of some, and for many others it can be confirmed by eye witness from many other Smashers. Beyond that, I hope that you can trust me from my status in the community. I understand what this may mean for changing your opinion on me as the owner of CT, and that it severely jeopardizes my streaming position with Apex. I do not care about the money, views, and followers it will bring in. I care more about supporting the right people in our community, and the security and safety of all of us.

It's tough to know where to start, as this is part of many years with a pattern of disrespect, poor decisions, and the inability to hold such a position. I would like to start with Apex 2010. Among many issues stands out, but the one that makes my skin crawl is the transportation of Japanese players to and from the venue and their hotel. Remember that this was the first time Japanese players had traveled to America to compete in a very long time, and the mode of transportation set up for our welcomed guests was via the back of a Uhaul truck. Incredibly unsafe, dangerous, and flat out disrespectful for treating guests from outside of our country to the best display of our tournaments and hospitality. How do I know this happened? I was guilt tripped into being the driver. Looking back at it, I probably should have denied doing this, but as far as I know someone else would have done it. I already discussed this publicly and spoke more on the subject in a mini video series I posted on YouTube in 2011 (Strife starts mostly happens in part 2 at 5:60 through the end):
-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRiryjWwHso
-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfnQUwIR-t4
-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmLN-IiLRXI
There are other things in the video about CoT5 and such in the video, but that's not really important now. I originally posted this because Strife felt the need to share his opinion on other TOs, and trash talked myself along with other main TOs, while he's far from perfect himself. To summarize, Alex Strife had Bardull from California unexpectedly rent a Uhaul truck (because Strife lacks his own license), spend all night driving and transporting equipment for him without asking us prior while he stayed at the hotel, and transport international players from Japan and Europe in the back of the Uhaul truck, even while TVs were back there that could fall over on them and cause serious injuries.

I apologize if the rest of this isn't in the most chronological order, but I'll do my best to keep it organized and mention when everything happened. I'm literally trying to remember about 6 years of drama and issues here with Alex Strife.

Furthermore relating to issues and choices as a TO, there is one serious issue he has done at past Apexs that I'm surprised no one caught on to. Many people can vouch for this, is that multiple Apexs for years now largely utilized burned discs for running Brawl. Project M was kept off of the main stream at Apex 2014 for fears of potential copyright issues (even though the game is arguably fine), yet he had no problem saving himself tons of money by hacking Wiis and running burned Brawl discs in a majority of the setups. This especially became an issue at Apex 2014 where many of the setups kept breaking and freezing, so if you remember seeing such a large amount of Brawl set ups turned off throughout the event, it's because these discs were failing and may not have been able to be started up right away. Many Apex staff can confirm that this happens. This is the closest I can find now to some sort of proof of it:

http://i.imgur.com/oueBj0c.png

What about Youmacon? Who here knows about this event? You may know about it if you live around Michigan, or if you've caught me stream it over the last 3 years. It's one of the largest (and best) anime conventions in the country that happens annually each Fall in Detroit. Unlike many cons, they take their gaming very seriously, and hold tournaments for it each yet. Starting in 2012 they brought Apex to host the Smash portion of the event, and by relation, CT to stream Smash at the event (though we were treated as a separate entity apart from Apex). Youmacon 2012 was one of the biggest events I had ever done opportunity wise. I made more money from this than any event prior, and was able to be flown out with an assistant to work on the stream there and enjoy the best con I've ever been to. With Youmacon 2012 however, there were a lot of issues regarding the TO'ing of the event. Alex Strife was flown there to act as the leading TO for Smash, yet he did next to nothing. He brought along False in the event to act as a Co-TO, yet False had never TO'd before. Why would Strife pick False to be his Co-TO and have Youmacon fly him (False) out to work on the event when they (should) are expecting top rate tournament organization. This deal was made for Strife's own gain for Apex as he added False to his team for Youma 2012 in exchange for False to make the Apex 2013 trailer. You might recall that False still came back for staff at Youmacon 2013, and this was because he was no longer a part of Strife's group, and I felt bad that he experienced such a great time and couldn't come back because he shouldn't have been a part of Strife's group in the first place, that I brought him on board of the CT team with Youmacon 2013 and used his video talents to help improve the production quality of the stream. I confronted Strife about my concerns with how poorly he treated Youmacon 2012 (barely doing anything at the event and sticking all of the work for a contracted top TO onto someone who doesn't organize events and not promoting the event at all), and this is the result of said conversation. I'm sure you'll all love to see what he had to say about Youmacon:

http://i.imgur.com/i0JYJof.png

I'll touch on one more point in regards to tournament operation, considering this is what we all commonly know Strife about. For years with Apex I have worked very closely with Strife and Crismas, very close. So much  that I was essentially second/third in command of the event I literally know everything that happened in the event. 2015 is the first event since joining the team I wasn't closely intertwined in everything, which I'll touch on soon. Alex Strife simply isn't fit for running a tournament like Apex. Many people have issues, and I can sympathize with that, but if you're not fit for a job, then don't do it. This year was horrendous for me leading up to now and Apex 2015 (which I'll get into the personal section of this after the TO'ing part), but the road to 2014 was just as bad, but more centralized on the group. There were multiple occasions (at least twice, maybe three times) where Strife quit Apex suddenly without warning. This was usually caused by drama and depression is on own life, but every time this happened all of the work for Apex would suddenly fall on Crismas and I. It was incredibly tough considering I was still working a full time job and managing CT and streaming consistently, and you can only imagine the extra stress this would put on Cris. We would be forced to pick up all of the slack from him, doing all of the work we were doing, and doing his as well and worrying about how we could finish the event. During such times, Strife would be 100% unreachable. He would often delete his Facebook, not answer calls or texts, nothing. It left us in very poor spots. However each time he would eventually come back like nothing happened, and we were left guessing when the next time he would leave would be. Multiple staff members actually took large strides to try and suggest he step down from the owner position of Apex and just work on specific facets because we were worried he couldn't do it (he couldn't), but it never stuck.

Once specific time I recall him quitting Apex 2014 Staff was the weekend of July 12th, 2013. For those of you who don't remember, that was Evo 2013 weekend. He was so distraught at the news of Evo 2013 becoming the largest Melee tournament of all time, that instead of him being happy for the community, he reacted by exclaiming to us (Cris and I) that Evo didn't deserve to become the largest Melee tournament. It was only an achievement that he should deserve. It upset him so much that he literally left Apex staff, removed himself from the staff groups, and became unreachable for Cris and I to pick up the slack. The ego he must have to think of this in such a way and be so self-centered is sickening.

One of the other times he quit Apex that year actually happened after something he did publicly. I hate to bring up old wounds again potentially, but we all remember it happened. Unfortunately I don't have a screenshot of this, but I know people out there do. The Tantalus was previously married, and his wife had left him. At a time not too long before Apex 2014, I was streaming one of RJ's Collision events. Mind you at the time neither Tantalus nor Strife were at the event. Strife was watching the stream and chatting and while Tant was brought up somehow in commentary, Strife made the following quote (as close to word for word that I can remember) - "Wow Tant is such a loser no wonder why his wife left him". This was completely unprompted, and I don't even think Tant was in the stream chat when it happened. This is what he thinks of other influential members of our community. A screenshot of this is floating around and was all over Facebook that weekend. If someone has it, I would appreciate if you could post it since I can't find it at the moment. I am thankful that Tant now has a wonderful fiance and I wish for them the best :)  But yes, after this blew up online, Strife resigned from Apex again internally, and was unreachable to everyone. Even Vinnie couldn't contact him, who at the time was sponsored by Alex and Apex. He wasn't able to talk to Strife about a lot of pressing issues, and was upset enough about it and turned to me for help, which is why Vinnie made the switch from Apex to CT, after I properly consulted Cris about it to which she was fine with.

And while I'm on the subject, Strife has said very negative things about multiple people in our community. Here's another one I have proof of, about one of our most influential Smash players at the moment, ZeRo. Strife tried to guilt trip him into helping promote Apex by lying to him saying that Nintendo would support Apex 2014 if Apex got 350-400 entrants for Brawl and that he'll have to cancel Apex if he doesn't get enough entrants. This conversation is a little tough to follow, but you should get it. When ZeRo posts the conversation between him and strife, every line break is a switch in person between himself and ZeRo:

http://i.imgur.com/dk0C7TN.png

Now to hopefully reach a bit of a wrap up here, onto more personal stuff I've had to deal with him. After Apex 2014 where we had Spooky, he had recommended to Strife and Cris that I be the main streamer for Apex 2015. He was very pleased with my work, my numbers were good, and we didn't need Spooky's follower base really. Working with him was great though, I thoroughly appreciated it. I put in a lot of work for Apex 2013 and Apex 2014, despite only being a secondary stream for both. I was so paranoid about Apex 2013 happening perfectly that I brought THREE entire stream setups to the event. Even if I had 2 major hardware failures, I would still be fine and able to stream the event. For 2014 I stayed up for two entire nights before the event working on the stream to make sure it was perfect. I worked my normal night shift Wednesday night into Thursday at my job (I've been working nights in IT support for about 2 years now), then drove to Apex to begin setting up, and when people walked through the doors into the venue Friday morning at 9am and saw me there still working on the stream to perfection, I had not slept since Wednesday, and still continued for the entire day.

I was offered the main stream position for Apex 2015 and I was ecstatic. This happened very early in the planning for Apex 2015, probably happened somewhere around February - March of 2014. Strife soft announced it in the MIOM FB group, but it was never really posted officially anywhere since Apex 2015 wasn't even announced yet. As time went on though, I started to notice a slip in communication between the two of us. He wasn't talking to me as much, I wasn't in the loop for Apex communication really. I was still on board for events like Zenith in August, but stuff didn't feel right. He started to act very negatively to work I was doing, and started to vaguebook (posting stuff on FB without saying the true subject or leaving out some information) about me and even flat out call me out for stuff. When MLG in 2014 was announced and I was doing a lot of content for them, I made the following promotional image for them and used it for a lot of advertising when it came to MLG and my stream:

http://clashtournaments.com/wp-content/uploads/MLG-Welcome-Home.png

Strife's response?

http://i.imgur.com/h04STtM.png

(btw that Twitter picture he used like almost all of last year is a picture I drew that he continue to use for some reason I have no idea why <_<)

Strife made posts such as he hoped that Smash 4 would have a new best player because he was tired of seeing people in blue keep winning (referring to not seeing CT succeed and primarily talking about ZeRo). I don't have a screencap of this since it happened when I was mobile in Otakon and was deleted not long after posted.

I started to become worried about my streaming position with Apex. Apex 2015 was announced for sure nearing the end of the summer, and it still wasn't announced that I was main stream. Meanwhile, only more and more hate would come from Strife to me. It really began to bother me... a lot. He would say yeah you're main stream, but continually dodge announcing it. The process up to Zenith 2014 did not go well. There was a lot of tension between us, and he went as far as yelling at me in public in front of others when I was just trying to suggest some ways to help the event at the end of Day 1. Ask (pikachu) Axe, he was right next to us when it happened.

I admittedly have some issues with depression and anxiety, and a lot of this was building up terribly for me. I actually did confront Strife about this, mentioning how this awkward state I'm in with Apex was severely bothering me. I wouldn't know how to talk to him, worried that I would say the wrong thing and be dropped, worried that I wasn't doing good enough or what I could do better. He eventually signed a contract with me that I was the main stream of Apex 2015. You all however reading this now know that I am indeed not the main stream of Apex.

Despite a contract being signed, things only got worse between us. Actually, the comments I mentioned made during Otakon were made after the contract was signed if I'm not mistaken. He continued to bully me online constantly. It's like sure, I landed my dream opportunity for a stream after years of putting in as much work as humanly possible, but at what cost? It felt like I was being tortured mentally. To have someone I once considered a close friend and should be working with on great things to do this to me.

This is about when the issues with Nyani started to arise if you read what she had to say on the Strife drama. The first convo she posted where Strife revealed what he knew about her to me happened in August after Zenith if I'm not mistaken. His private message to her was in September on our way to Guts. I was stuck, I couldn't do anything. My depression and anxiety became so bad that I literally couldn't type to Strife. I would try to respond to him and my hands would freeze up and be unable to type. I would receive messages like this from him at times:

http://i.imgur.com/DRB2WPI.png

Mind you this was all sent in the span of 20 minutes, and I was driving an unable to respond when this was sent. I was seriously so scared to type to him that I just... couldn't. I tried to explain everything I could to Cris, and even spoke to her about my depression and anxiety problems being brought on my Strife mostly at the time, and nothing came of it. I had to get a good mutual friend of ours that knew the situation to respond to Strife on my behalf.

In mid November I tried to step up and clear everything with Strife and Cris. Confront them both to find out what is wrong between all of us and why I was being treated as such. There are countless more accounts of bullying I haven't put here because it would be far too much to grab now, and I've already been typing this for probably close to 2 hours. Strife said he was disappointed in me and expected too much out of me for his event, and took out his frustration with me negatively.

http://i.imgur.com/JQqfjO7.png

I tried my best. I went over -100 hours owed at work from how much time I took off for events. I was in California more days than NJ in June despite keeping up a full time job here. At one point I legit flew to Cali, flew back to NJ on a Sunday night, worked 3 days, then flew back to Cali for more events. I believe I streamed more Smash 3DS events than anyone else. This isn't about me though. I  tried, and dangling in front of me was the potential loss of my biggest opportunity going out the window. It drove my paranoid because of maybe losing this, and the person in charge of it all treating me like shit. This same conversation I just posted from erupted into a terrible argument, and eventually became a snippet from Nyani's third screenshot, where Strife used Nyani's birth name to me, solely for the purpose of upsetting me.

I wanted to post everything I'm posting now before, but I couldn't. I was stuck. He had her as ammo, and was already using it against me. I didn't care about the views and the money from Apex, because if I stood up and quit Apex on the grounds of not supporting Strife and posting all of this, he could have said anything about her he wanted to the community against her will. But I had a contract, right?

http://i.imgur.com/bcEKmeZ.png

I apologize what I had to say about VGBC in there, but I didn't want to doctor the comment. But that is what it came down to - someone who I once considered a very close friend and worked with closely for so many years couldn't even keep a promise to me that he held over me for the better part of a year, and consulted lawyers with over me. Threatened to take me to court over this. I couldn't handle the stress anymore, and while I would have loved to have just walked away and never deal with him, he said what he had to say about Nyani not long after that, and I realized I couldn't do anything. I tried to help make up, and I settled for the second stream position.

Even since then, when I thought I could just continue on with Apex and leave when it was over, it continued. Strife posted online while I was streaming Collision XI that it was a shame that there was nothing of importance to watch on Twitch that day or an event to attend in Atl North (he clearly knew about C-XI since he was confronted about it in said status, but he didn't care since it was held by RJ and streamed by me). You all may know about the recent online invitational I held for Smash 4, and guess who had comments about it:

http://i.imgur.com/BYfzpFE.png

And when confronted...

http://i.imgur.com/26SYPEp.png

This is in fact one of our most recent conversations. This is still how I'm treated by him, yet I'm expected to still work for his event and act like nothing is wrong.

He is a terrible person, and has shown such a pattern of personality for years. He has done this to me, my girlfriend, countless community members, and some of my closest friends. It has pained me to see what he would put others through. While he's caused my a serious amount of depression and anxiety issues, I feel that I can handle it, I'm tough. When he starts to do these things to my friends however, I can not excuse. One of my better friends throughout Smash for years was Cris. I know how Strife has treated people, and she's probably gotten it the worse. I haven't been able to forgive Strife for what he's done to her despite all of this. Plenty of people know this, and rumors have spread. I can confirm it though, he did cheat on her. I don't know if Strife and Cris were "technically" together at said time, but yes, this happened. I understand I do not have definitive proof for this to show you all in screenshot form, but you can take my word on this. Furthermore, the proof I have for the source I have on this is very reliable. It didn't stop there though... Last year at E3 the day before the invitational, Strife told someone his thoughts about Cris' involvement with the invitational, and that he was jealous of her involvement with it and wished to ruin her week there.

This is the person behind Apex. While I know there is nothing we can do now, as everyone's flights and rooms have been purchased. But this is the person we're supporting. I never wanted it to come to all of this, but it had to. Everyone that has stepped forward today so far are so incredibly brave, and I hope that all of this can break what we have put up with secretly as a community thus far.

I know the timing is very poor with Apex less than 2 weeks away and Nintendo supporting their first "grassroots" event, but I hope Nintendo and everyone else realizes that this is not a trend in our community, and that we are worth it. Everything today is based solely on one person, Alex Strife. He is the outlier to this behavior we have had to hide for as long as I can remember in Smash. Regardless if I end up providing content or not at Apex, I look forward to still seeing many of my friends from around the world.


---


TL;DR:


-Alex Strife's transportation for international players from Japan and Europe at Apex 2010 involved having them ride in the back of a Uhaul van, while there were TVs in the back with them piled up, all while driving on highways.
-Apex has been known to rely on using modified Wiis with burned copies of Smash games to have more setups.
-Strife said that Youmacon was nothing more than a chance for him to build connections and network while he was being hired as the main TO, and he pawned his work off onto someone who has never TO'd before in exchange for Apex trailers to be made.
-Strife has quit Apex multiple times internally, each time dumping the work on myself and Crismas unexpectedly. Two of the times that prompted him to quit was being upset that Evo 2013 hit the Melee tournament record that he felt he deserved instead of them, and calling Tantalus a loser and saying no wonder why his wife left him, publicly in a stream chat.
-Lied to ZeRo saying that Apex 2014 would be canceled if he didn't get 350 Brawl entants, and that Nintendo would sponsor the event if he got 350-400 entrants, all to guilt trip Zero into help him promote the event even further.
-Said that ZeRo is essentially scared to leave his country because the world is big and scary, someone who has supported his event and traveled to internationally every year since 2010.
-Promised me main stream of Apex 2015, signed a contract with me guaranteeing the position, then consulted lawyers over the contract and threatened to take me to court over it when he took the position away.
-He continued to harass and bully me online for months and berated me in person both before and after I was dropped as 2015 main stream causing a lot of depression and anxiety issues to the point where I was afraid to talk to him.
-Privately messaged and harassed my girlfriend and used details of her personal life to deter me from coming forward with these things.
-He has cheated on his girlfriend of many years, Crismas