Smash Melee God Armada explains why he won’t return for World Tour

Former Super Smash Bros pro Adam ‘Armada’ Lindgren has announced that he has no plans to come out of retirement even after the announcement of the 2020 World Tour.

Armada, who was one of the “Gods of Melee,” retired in 2018 citing extreme motivational issues that had plagued his whole career.

In a Twitlonger, the Swedish prodigy explained that even with World Tour and fans eager to see him compete again, the legendary player won’t be picking up a GameCube controller to reclaim his crown.

According to Lindgren, every day since retiring he had been asked by fans to return, insisting that he was scared to play in the current era of Melee, made fun of him for “giving up too much,” and received messages he considered to be mean.

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“It honestly gets rough to every day wake up and in a way feel like people don’t respect my decision,” Armada said in regards to fans demanding he compete again.

The Melee God also addressed some people claiming he was afraid to compete. “Truth to be told, Melee has not changed much since I stopped competing and playing friendlies at Summit made me even more positive of this,” he stressed. “I competed for a super long time against practically all the current top players. I’m also not saying this to discredit the great players, just natural that a game like Melee that’s been out for so long won’t change THAT fast these days.”

He went on to say that the money was never what drove him to compete. “It’s no secret that Melee as a whole has been ‘poor’ when it comes to money, but I would say that we have been very rich when it comes to passion and love for the game, that passion and love is exactly WHY I kept playing for as long as I did. I had goals I wanted to achieve and I did everything in my power to reach those goals.”

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“Now the Smash World Tour got announced and don’t get me wrong, I’m super happy that such a project is finally happening but a lot of people either seem to confuse money with passion or simply don’t care. Not saying money can’t be the main motivation for some people but that was never the case for me,” he added.

“I’m happy such a prize pool will be up for grabs, I’m happy that players with a passion that are great at the game have great chances to live off Smash BUT I NEVER COMPETED FOR MONEY,” he exclaimed. “Some people probably have a hard time believing it but for me, money never was the reason I competed so a circuit having a lot of money does not mean my passion & love returns cause money was never what motivated me in the first place.”

While it’s unfortunate for fans that Armada won’t be returning to the battlefield, having already reached his final destination, the community as a whole was very pleased with the announcement of the Smash World Tour.

Hopefully, they can see Armada doing commentary for some of the events on the circuit.