How Steve Broke Smash Ultimate - A Character Analysis

Steve is likely the strongest character in smash ultimate and one of the most oppressive characters in all of smash history. But you may wonder exactly why? Today I will be taking a deep dive into one of the most divisive characters ever added to smash and a bit about the history of the character.

As always thanks to Zeckemyro for helping with research and providing all the hitbox visuals, and thanks to Rockman for reading through some of the script and helping me out with some questions.
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Videos used:

PMLG tweet:

Steve techs video:

0:00 Intro
1:46 Fighters Pass 1
4:44 Fighters Pass 2
8:38 Famine (Blocks)
24:43 Steve On Release
31:43 Conquest (Minecart)
44:14 Steve Wins 2 Majors
46:30 Death (Anvil)
56:46 The Gimvitational
59:43 War (Up-tilt)
1:06:02 Smash Con 2022
1:10:46 Diamonds & Crafting
1:15:46 Back Air
1:18:47 Macros
1:20:05 Forward Air
1:21:33 Grab
1:23:06 Jab
1:24:23 Elytra
1:29:29 TNT
1:31:04 F-Smash
1:32:21 D-Smash
1:33:00 Up-Smash
1:33:51 Dash Attack
1:34:13 Down-Tilt
1:34:42 Moveset Roundup
1:35:45 Banning Steve
1:41:34 PMLG
1:45:42 Conclusion

[walkingpokedex]

I like how the history in tournaments basically went:

"Okay, Steve looks a little broken, but it could just be good players."


"Okay, someone new won another tournament, but it could still just be a hidden gem of a player"


"Okay, what the fuck."

[dabiskitt]

I’ve always hated how the magma block on Steve’s up smash is bigger than the rest of his blocks. All blocks should be the same size

[theonewhodoesrants]

the unfortunate part of attempting banning characters in smash is that if they don't have a lot of top level rep, people won't think the character is a problem. but if they are everywhere at top level (see brawl and s4), then they can't get banned because many top players will refuse to attend tournaments their character is banned at

[iSickle_]

remember when steve was a meme character
remember when microsoft owning minecraft made his inclusion impossible
remember when everyone laughed at his reveal trailer
remember when steve broke the internet

now everyone is terrified. sakurai's dedication to keeping him true to the source has doomed everyone.

[burbusburbus]

I think the weirdest thing is i look at almost everything steve does, and go "yeah, he can do that in minecraft". Like, aside from placing blocks mid-air, and minecart having a hitbox instead of just being a grab, this might be one of the most faithful characters in smash history

[dinosaurusrex]

Why does Steve get to keep his inventory after a ko when the default setting in Minecraft is keep inventory off?

[SonicTheCutehog]

He literally broke Ultimate. Ice physics don't work anymore and the lava in Super Mario Maker sometimes doesn't hurt you starting with the Steve update.

[maskofthedragon]

Steve mains suppressed their power levels until after the final balance patch

[slimecat]

In spite of his flaws, I still respect the hell out of the smash bros developers for the sheer ambition of his character. Adding features onto EVERY stage to accommodate ONE character is still so insane to me.

[Cheyhime]

5:40
...A DIAMOND in the rough, a GOLD medalist... whose IRON grasp seems unyielding. A character that WOOD leave a profound mark on the meta.

I see what you did there, you DIRTy scoundrel...

[morphstarchangeling]

It doesn't help that the legal stages just so happen to give Steve his best tables for mining resources quickly.

[borkbork]

'You're basically better off not interacting with it' - every other move on steve

[lasercraft]

YES, finally someone gets it... I _hate_ how you have to mash in order to escape grabs, especially the minecart! Its just a bad design. It hurts your hand, it damages your controller, and is just extremely frustrating.

[hi-i-am-atan]

i think the wildest thing this illustrates is just how much of steve's overwhelming powerful comes from _exceeding_ tiny details. like, the blocks' hurtbox, the way blocks have differing and p. significant hp, blocks giving no-impact landing, stages being lax with the red zones on their blockgrid, minecart's hurtbox extending so far up and being invulnerable at startup, minecart's grab hitbox not sharing a hit cooldown with its impact hitbox, anvil's hitbox having the exact opposite problem as block's hurtbox, elytra's goddamn _black hole_ hands, elytra's free firework rocket, what resources steve starts and respawns with, and the general trend of his resource costs ( other than tnt ) being pretty damn lenient

like, it's a cute detail that stone blocks last longer than dirt blocks, but is it really necessary when dirt blocks are already as durable as they are? iron is one thing, since that means you have _no_ other blocks and burning through has far more significant ramifications, but the miscellaneous blocks really don't gain anything but "a cute detail" from being mechanically distinct. speaking of iron, does he really need to start with _three?_ does he really need to keep it after dying, except also if he used it all up, he gets an _extra_ three to immediately play with? i mean honestly i don't mind him respawning with like one or two units of it ( as, like, both the floor _and_ ceiling; convert lost iron to stone if you want, he just shouldn't be able to respawn with a _full bar_ ) since respawn disadvantage is a bitch and especially for a character with his physics, getting a single free anvil or minecart to mix up his landing or to save for their importance in his offense ain't all that unreasonable. if anything, it's what he _starts_ with that's more egregious, because the comparison to charge moves isn't exactly inaccurate, and i mean ... imagine if samus could store multiple charge shots, _and she _*_started with three_*

i'm pretty confident that you could adjust all these smaller details while keeping all of steve's more overt strengths untouched and his performance would just _plummet._ like, not from the higher tiers, no those overt strengths are still A Lot, but his perch as the game-warping toppest tier makes any fall far from insignificant

[mrbister]

I really appreciate the fact that you didn’t just mindlessly slam Steve for being overpowered, but also go into HOW this character ended up in this state in the first place. It feels like a lot of people forget that Steve wasn’t considered a super broken “must nerf” character until a long while after his release.

Edit: Just finished the video and God it is so refreshing to see such an overall optimistic Smash video considering how most of the community behaves.

[LeviAuren]

As a robin enthusiast, I imagine Steve to be if Levin sword had separate durabilities for each direction. And could be restored by shielding for 1 second

[KingObliv]

this was the best "Steve is broken" video you were descriptive, reasonable, and not overly negative

[troykv]

Huh, in a way, Steve was destined to be the best character in the game, because everything that made him overpower wasn't fully explored until the game development ended.

He was too complicated, too clunky, too slow to get results early on, but there was a lot of potential, but unlike "Mr. Potential"... this actually ended up be a reality.

When people finished cooking this messy recipe, the most disastrously beautiful dish was discovered.

[unit_b]

there's an objective comedy to the fact that out of all the beasts, warriors and kings in smash bros, some guy named steve just so happens to be the most broken character in the game

[shadowwalker]

As a professional software engineer, I can actually offer some insight as to why there is a seemingly arbitrary line in the sand of when balance patches stopped and why they didn't just go back later and fix things. It's money. At some point, a decision was made that that was all the content they wanted to put into the game, and they didn't want to keep paying devs to work on a project they were done adding content for. They wanted those devs to go work on other projects or whatever business reason was decided.

While it's theoretically possible to go back to a project to add more patches or content, the reality is that it's not financially practical. Let's say that there are 5 devs, 10 qa/playtesters, and 5 business folks that are needed to make an update for Smash. Given that it's been a while since any content has been made, the devs would need some amount of time to relearn the codebase and the business team would need to do some research to decide what direction to take in order to more appropriately balance the game. In a perfect world that probably takes 2 weeks, and they haven't even really touched the code. Assuming the dev team was highly efficient, maybe it takes them 2 weeks to make the initial code changes so the testing team can go at it. Assuming they didn't get everything perfectly right on their first pass, let's say it takes 4 weeks for testing, feedback, and testing again to make sure everything is good.

So we've got a team of 20 people working for 2 months to make a balance patch to fix the issues. Let's say on average, each of those members makes 100K USD/year (they probably don't all make that much, but there would probably be a lot more than 20 people working on a AAA game). Just to pay for those 2 months of work we're talking ~300-350K USD. So with lowball people working on the team, very optimistic timeline for completing the work, and very average salary estimate that's the kind of price estimate you're looking at to do the work.