Super Smash Bros. has blossomed one of the biggest tournament scenes in the Fighting game community. Series creator Masahiro Sakurai has been accused in the past of supposedly despising the competitive scene, and doing everything in his power to take it away from them. Because he's some evil psychopath who hates deep games. Yet, that could not be farther from the truth.
Far too often, the Smash community lies, twists, and distorts Sakurai's actual statements and what he means when he says them.
For example, when he was quoted saying Competitive Smash has no future, many people mistook that to mean he thinks Smash simply being played at tournaments is not a future. What he actually meant by that was that if the player only plays Smash Bros. as if it were a competitive fighter, it has no future, because he feels there's so much more to Smash Bros. than its competitive aspects. The game was designed to be played with such a large degree of flexibility, that if most players stick to only one or two ways to play, then there's not much fun to be had. His point is that play it competitively if you want, the game allows for that. But remember that there's a lot more fun to be had with the game than just 1v1, no items, stock only. This is the reason for Ultimate's new rule saving feature. It's to allow the player to have a wide variety of customized modes and play-styles on hand for any situation.
Another example is when he's gone on record to say that he felt Melee was too hardcore. The Melee defense force then begins to swoop in and say that "But casuals enjoyed it too". Yes casuals did enjoy Melee. That's not what Sakurai's saying here though. Sakurai's main point is that Melee was too hard to become good at. It required a lot of skill and button inputs more so than other entries in the series, to even be remotely competent at. Sakurai dislikes making games with overly large skill gaps where a beginner is severely punished for not spending enough time learning all these techniques. He wants Smash to be a game where anybody can pick it up and learn on a deeper level with ease. That way, even if the more experienced player wins, the newbie at least knows what they were doing. There's also a misconception that he hates Melee because of this. He doesn't, he enjoys Melee, and has even called it "Exhilarating and Fun". He just feels it took the hidden depth aspect of Smash a bit too far. Again, Ultimate goes the opposite route by making the game tempo faster, while simplifying the inputs for more advanced techniques, making them easy to learn. The depth should come from knowing when and how to use them effectively, not spending days trying to master doing them at all.
Point is, Sakurai has nothing against competitive Smash. In fact many of the changes made to Smash 4 and Ultimate were made with the competitive scene in mind. He simply feels that Smash shouldn't be defined by its competitive aspect, nor should the competitive aspect have a large barrier to entry, above all else, Sakurai's main goal is to make the game fun, not competitive. It's easy to forget, but Smash Bros. is still a Party game first, eSport second, not vice versa.
