Vergeben leaks

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The Vergeben leaks are a series of insider info from the user Vergeben, a well-known leaker coming from a history of predicting fighting games, about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Starting before E3 2018, Vergeben's leaks were undoubtedly infamous on which characters would make the cut for this new alleged game. Though the veracity of his assertions is up for debate, almost all of them have come to be true, with his only fault so far being that a Square Enix character would be the first one revealed as downloadable content.

E3 2018 leak

On March 16, 2018, eight days after the reveal of the then-untitled Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Vergeben posted a thread on GameFAQs to shout that Ridley was a playable character and that the new Smash game would be an entirely new game but with reused assets. Exactly two months later, on May 16, Vergeben posted another thread on GameFAQs, claiming he had a reliable source with information on the character roster of the then teased but still unrevealed title. Specifically, he said that Ridley and Simon Belmont would be newcomers and that the entire roster from Super Smash Bros. 4 would return with no cuts, with the Ice Climbers and Snake also returning after being cut from SSB4. Vergeben also claimed that the popular Microsoft-owned indie game Minecraft would be represented in some form.

The lack of cuts from SSB4's roster, the return of Snake and the Ice Climbers, and the addition of Ridley were all confirmed during Nintendo’s E3 2018 Direct. This left Simon Belmont and Minecraft representation Vergeben's only unconfirmed claims. In response to a GameFAQs post asking about Simon, Vergeben replied “Just be patient. There are still things to be revealed before release”, suggesting that Simon would be revealed at a later date.

Pre launch leaks

After Nintendo's E3 2018 presentation, he later claimed on Reddit that there were at least “half a dozen newcomers” left to be revealed, but he didn’t know who any of them were aside from Simon. He made another thread on GameFAQs, which has since been deleted, on July 28, reasserting Simon and adding Isabelle to his claims. A fourth GameFAQs thread he posted on August 3 claimed that a Pokémon from Generation VII would appear as a playable fighter and that it would not be Decidueye, Lycanroc, or Mimikyu. Simon Belmont's playability and Mimikyu's lack thereof as a Poké Ball summon was officially revealed in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Direct on August 8. Isabelle was revealed as a newcomer at the end of the September 13 Nintendo Direct, confirming his claims of her playability as well.

On August 18, Vergeben posted on a thread stating that Ken from Street Fighter would appear in the game as an Echo Fighter of Ryu. Four days later, Vergeben made another post on a thread, this time stating that a new third-party fighter owned by Square Enix would appear in the game. This lead some to believe that Vergeben was simply taking info from the NeoGAF Leak, but the next day he claimed in a thread that he did not know anything about the NeoGAF leak. He also states that the NeoGAF leak contradicts his own information since it claims there will be no new Pokémon rep. In the time since his original claim of a Square Enix newcomer, Vergeben has stated that he has actually heard seven different names for the newcomer, as Square Enix is intentionally sending out multiple names to try to prevent the real one from being leaked.

Another thread by Vergeben had him assert that Incineroar is the Generation VII Pokémon that will appear as a newcomer. He also addressed the popular "Box Theory", which states that there will only be two more fighters in the base game as the box art for the Special Edition of the game only has room for two more fighters. Though assured that Incineroar and Ken were in the game, he notes that the source for the Square Enix newcomer had never been wrong in the past. In the debate surrounding the banner leak, Vergeben made a post on October 31, suggesting that Isaac, in contrast to what the rumor was suggesting, was an Assist Trophy instead of being playable.

On November 1, 2018, the final Nintendo Direct for the game revealed Ken and Incineroar as the last fighters for the base game, as well as revealing Isaac to be an Assist Trophy, confirming Vergeben's earlier claims about them. It was also announced in this Direct that there would be additional fighters as paid DLC, which could possibly include the Square Enix newcomer and the Minecraft content.

DLC leaks

On September 16, 2018, Vergeben claimed the game will have post-launch content, which could possibly include the Square Enix newcomer if the Box Theory turns out to be true.

Vergeben made a post the day after the Fighters Pass was revealed, reiterating that he was confident one of the 5 post-launch DLC characters will be a Square Enix rep and that it would be the first of the DLC characters to launch. He also reiterated that Minecraft content will be coming in some form. Additionally, he stated that Senjougahara__Hitagi, another leaker he considers reliable, has heard that the Minecraft content will include Steve as a playable character. He also shared that Hitagi's sources claim that there have been talks of a Granblue Fantasy newcomer as DLC, most likely Katalina. Hitagi initially verified the Steve and Katalina claims, but she later retracted the Katalina claim, saying that the "deal" was not related to Smash Bros. On November 21, Hitagi again stated that Steve is definitely coming, but also announced that she has given up trying to find out about the rest of the characters, as the ones she heard about were starting to look like red herrings, including any Square Enix fighters, thus bringing Vergeben's claim into doubt as well.

On November 24, another insider by the name of Ryce stated that Vergeben was likely misled about Steve being a DLC character since this claim came out long before the DLC choices were set in stone. Vergeben made a post agreeing with Ryce and stating that he still heard that Minecraft was still being represented with a boss, despite acknowledging the fact that nobody had yet found any references to Minecraft in the datamine of the full game. It should be noted that this does not dismiss Hitagi's claim of Steve being DLC.

At The Game Awards 2018, Joker was revealed to be the first DLC fighter, directly contradicting Vergeben's claim that the first DLC character to be revealed would be a Square Enix character. Vergeben later justified this discrepancy by claiming that Joker was moved up on the schedule last-minute.

On December 30th, 2018, Vergeben made a post following up that the Square Enix newcomer was most likely a Dragon Quest character, namely Erdrick, Luminary or Slime. This correlated with a separate alleged leak originating from 5channel, claiming that Erdrick was the Square Enix rep, and would feature the Luminary as an alternate costume, while the Slime would appear on a Dragon Quest stage. He would affirm on April 25, 2019, that Erdrick was definitely in the Fighters Pass. He also stated that Minecraft content of some kind was being added but that it did not necessarily mean that Steve would be playable.

On June 6th, 2019, Vergeben claimed that Banjo & Kazooie had a 99% chance of being part of the Fighters Pass. He also reaffirmed his statement that Minecraft would be represented through DLC, though he also stated that he was unsure if Steve would be playable. Banjo & Kazooie were confirmed at E3 2019 along with Erdrick, albeit as a skin for Hero, something Vergeben stated he took great joy in as he was not informed of multiple Dragon Quest skins, and that it also explained why he kept hearing Luminary along with Erdrick. He later debunked a popular 4chan rumor that the 4th fighter in the Fighters Pass would be a female character with a "mecha".

On September 1st, 2019, Vergeben claimed that a playable character owned by SNK Corporation would appear to be in the game and he heard one name of the character. A day later, he made a thread with a gif of Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury and later claimed that Terry would be appearing as a playable character. Terry was indeed confirmed in a Nintendo Direct on September 4th, 2019.

Following this, even after Terry's release in November, Vergeben would go on to dispel many rumors about the identity of the last character in the Fighters Pass:

• He claimed on October 24 that the final fighter is not Ryu Hayabusa from the Ninja Gaiden series, though noted that there was some possibility of Ryu being released as DLC later down the line.
• He later denied that it was:
  • Scorpion from the Mortal Kombat series on November 4;
  • Geno or Doomguy from the Doom series on November 10;
  • Gordon Freeman from the Half-Life series on November 25;
  • from Nippon Ichi Software on November 26;
  • from either Ubisoft or Nihon Falcom on November 27;
  • or from either Bandai Namco or Level-5 on November 30.
  • He would post on December 6 that it was not from Capcom, Sega, Konami, Arc System Works, Spike Chunsoft, Marvelous Inc., Epic Games, Touhou Project, Bethesda, Koei Tecmo, Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, or Nintendo, potentially not from Microsoft or Square Enix, and not a character already in the game as an Assist Trophy or Spirit.

On December 7th, Vergeben stated that he would try to check if the final Fighters Pass character is owned by HAL Laboratory, Game Freak, Intelligent Systems, SNK, or Atlus. A different post he made later on the same day clarified that the list of companies he had listed the day before was incorrect, and it was only characters he had listed beside the companies' names that were disconfirmed. Characters removed from the running for Fighters Pass spot 5 by this were Arle Nadja from Puyo Puyo, Sakura from Sakura Wars, Crash Bandicoot from his self-titled series, Tracer from Overwatch, and Reimu Hakurei from Touhou. Kat from Gravity Rush was also disconfirmed as an aside, leaving the possibility for the remaining companies open. The second list of the post did not mention the disconfirmation of an Assist Trophy or Spirit being promoted like the first list did, though it is unknown if this is significant or an error. On December 8th, he made another post saying that the character is not Sora, Sol Badguy, Ragna, Billy and Jimmy Lee from Double Dragon, Dante, Phoenix Wright, Amaterasu, Monster Hunter, Sam Porter Bridges, Geralt of Rivia, Monokuma, or Kratos. Interestingly, Vergeben mentioned in the same post that when asking about KOS-MOS from Xenosaga in response to a rumor from 4chan that she would be announced as the 5th Fighters Pass character during The Game Awards 2019, his informant responded with a "not sure" about her. However, the informant had debunked a Bandai Namco rep beforehand, which could mean that their answer was a result of them thinking KOS-MOS was a Monolith Soft character and not one owned by Bandai Namco. While the informant has yet to confirm or deny if KOS-MOS is the 5th Fighters Pass character, The Game Awards 2019 aired without any new announcements regarding Smash.

On December 16, Vergeben claimed that the 5th Fighter Pass character was not Reiji Arisu and Xiaomu from Namco x Capcom and the Project x Zone series or Morrigan from Darkstalkers.

Reception

Vergeben denying that he made any comment on the SNK fighter rumor.

Leading up to the release of Ultimate, Vergeben was largely derided due to having previously shared supposed leaks for other games that were proven false. His defenders, then in the minority, would argue that he had nearly an equal amount of leaks that had come true and that the reason for his inaccuracy was that he himself is not an insider, but instead has connections to insiders and sometimes shares rumors from unreliable sources.

Similar to the Gematsu leaks, the confirmation during E3 2018 of several of Vergeben's claims brought a large amount of discussion surrounding them and their authenticity. Believers of the leak cited Vergeben's history of accurate insider info, while ascribing any potential and future falsehoods to the aforementioned lack of insider trading. Detractors were wary of Vergeben being a repeat of Gematsu, with accurate information at the start but less notable or outright wrong information towards the end. Another camp accused him of stealing information from other leaks, though many of the purported examples were, in fact, copycats of Vergeben.

The two predictions that gave Vergeben most of his credibility were Isabelle and Incineroar, for very few rumors had suggested their inclusions. Incineroar, in particular, was largely exclusive to Vergeben: many credited him with popularizing its inclusion, with most other leakers suggesting Decidueye, Mimikyu, Lycanroc, Tapu Koko, or Zeraora as the new Pokémon representative. Furthermore, a large portion of the community subscribed to the Grinch leak despite Vergeben adamantly denying it, and thus he was vindicated when the Grinch leak was debunked by Incineroar's reveal.

His claim that the first Challenger Pack would include a Square Enix fighter, the first and so far only claim of his to have been proven incorrect, drew in a fair bit of skepticism about the leak. Vergeben's explanation that Joker had been moved up last minute was largely accepted, in particular due to confirmation that Masahiro Sakurai had been requested by Nintendo last minute to prepare a trailer for Joker's reveal, leaving him unable to demonstrate any gameplay. Doubters pointed out that the leak by definition was not infallible due to making a completely wrong assumption, though this argument was dismissed as a fallacy of composition that did not degrade any of Vergeben's other claims.

Though his claims for Hero and Terry came to be true, doubt was cast upon them due to several other rumors implicating the same statements. For Hero, several rumors including the aforementioned 5channel leak suggested that Dragon Quest representation would come in some form, well before Vergeben starting making those claims for himself. He had also used the name "Erdrick" instead of "Luminary" like these rumors, despite the Luminary being the default costume and Vergeben being explicitly aware that the name kept cropping up. For Terry, the webpage that first triggered speculation about an SNK fighter came before Vergeben had said anything on the matter (and in fact Vergeben had to explain that he never commented on the SNK leak at all as an article written by The Verge claimed he did).

Vergeben's information leading up to the reveal of the fifth Fighters' Pass character drew large amounts of skepticism and criticism, as he shot down a vast majority of popular options without outright stating who the fighter is, although Vergeben was consistently transparent on the fact that neither he nor his source knew who it was. This criticism increased after Vergeben backtracked on a number of his disconfirmations; Vergeben justified this by stating that he had misunderstood his source, but many refused to accept the explanation. After The Game Awards passed without an announcement, many claimed that this proved Vergeben was wrong, even though Vergeben had never stated one way or the other whether there would be an announcement. As usual, all of Vergeben's vagueness and discrepancies can be justified by the fact that he himself is not an insider, meaning all information from him comes through a game of telephone, leading to misunderstandings and holes in the information.

Although most agree that Vergeben had to have had at least some legitimate insider information, some deniers continue to insist that Vergeben stole all of his information from other leaks or will point to Vergeben's two apparent falsehoods, that a Square Enix character would be the first on the Fighters Pass and that Minecraft would be represented in some way, as evidence to supposedly shut down all of the other leaks, despite his correct predictions greatly outnumbering them. In the end, Vergeben serves as a generally reliable source of information, but is still prone to mistakes if he believes an unreliable source, misunderstands a report, or his sources fall for false information.

Verdict

Proven

At present, the following are the claims made by Vergeben that have been confirmed:

• Ridley, Simon, Isabelle, Incineroar, and Ken would appear as newcomers, the latter as an Echo Fighter of Ryu.
• All characters from Super Smash Bros. 4 would return, as well as Snake and the Ice Climbers.
• Over half a dozen newcomers would be included (specifically eleven in the base game, 6 independent and 5 echoes).
• Decidueye, Lycanroc, Mimikyu, and Isaac would not be playable, the latter instead returning as an Assist Trophy.
• The game would have downloadable content.
• Banjo & Kazooie and either Luminary or Erdrick (Luminary and Erdrick both being present under the banner of Hero) would be part of the Fighters Pass.
• Terry would be appearing as the fourth character in the Fighters Pass.

Unproven

At present, the following are the claims made by Vergeben that have not yet been confirmed:

• Some form of Minecraft content, potentially a boss, will appear as DLC.
• The final fighter in the Fighters Pass is not a number of highly speculated characters, nor from multiple different popular companies.

Disproven

At present, the following are the claims made by Vergeben that have been proven wrong:

• The first character in the Fighters Pass will be a Square Enix character.