SMITE’s midseason update adds Nickelodeon cartoon skins as pros and fans agitate for in-person esports

SMITE players of a certain age might be taken with the MOBA’s midseason update, which has the centerpiece of several Nickelodeon cartoon character skins for members of the roster. Which might come as a surprise if it weren’t for the Avatar and TMNT skins.

Players can now purchase skins to dress up as Powdered Toast Man, Rocko, Invader Zim, or XJ-9, and those who purchase all four will get a Danny Phantom skin. There’s also a related event where players earn “flips” on a board when they complete certain quests, with additional Nickelodeon cosmetics like announcer packs, avatars, and loading screens. The midseason update has also added a new battle pass, introduced new glyphs, and made masks into starter items.

This would all be news in and of itself, but the game’s esports community is being worked up into a froth over the possibility that the SMITE Worlds event will be a digital affair. Hi-Rez CEO Stewart Chisam pondered on Twitter in April about whether to make the competition an in-person event or a digital one, while reports earlier this month state that several esports pros met with the studio, when it was confirmed that the event would indeed be virtual.

Word of this decision sent several current and former esports players of the MOBA to take to Twitter to agitate for a physical event and led to the proliferation of a related hashtag among fans. Chisam hasn’t directly addressed the furor as of this writing, but did state in a recent tweet that Worlds would be in January 2023 and that fans should “get [their bodies] ready,” while also promising more details soon.

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