Why are some people happy that melee got dropped? I think melee is one of the most exciting fighting games to watch so I'm sad it got dropped.

Because it’s old and uninteresting 

I think the only reason they went with BBTag over DBFZ was time.  They dropped to 4 games on Sunday and BBTag top 8 plays lightning fast.  Hopefully this means the stream will end BEFORE 2AM Eastern time now.

I am happy melee got dropped because I like the idea of Evo remaining contemporary and a 15+ year old game doesn't quite do that.  I would love to see them do another tournament though, an Evo Classic as some people have suggested, where they only go with 15+ year old games.  I think that would be lit.

Ultimate is simply the bigger and better game as a spectator sport as it offers what Melee has and more so the's no point in the latter being there especially as Ultimate's recent tournaments have shown a deep meta and it's not even developed yet, Melee at this point is figured out hence why the same people keep making the top 8 even S4 with all its Bayo and Diddy problems had more variation and that says something it also doesn't help that Melee has a community issue where it's a factory for jackasses leading to the Twitter wars today of people trolling the said community.

My only real disappointment in the line up is that Guilty Gear Xrd won't be there as that's been the best showing for the past few years but at least Samurai Shodown and Under Night are int.

Smash has the strongest grass roots scene of any fighting game anyway Melee will still be around for large Smash specific tournaments like Genesis, Shine, Pound, Summit etc...

A 10 year old classic game that nobody plays and watches obviously doesn't have a place at EVO but Melee is hugely popular, probably more popular than half of the games who will be at EVO. Melee is a legacy title and very unique in E-sports. That's the reason why Melee should be at EVO, not my subjective liking for the game.

Smash's legacy titles will always be more popular than most other games the series is a massive seller to point it outsells many other games combined, even today Smash 64 has an active scene comparable to other fighting games for reference we can't simply go by popularity.

It's not just the numbers of sold copies or that it is a Smash game, Melee survived two of its successor despite the fact that it never got any official support from nintendo(more the opposite) and that you need a old consol and a CRT to play it.

Melees is unique in Esports history, the only thing comparable would be Starcraft: Brood War in south korea.

Melee survived because of peculiar factors, Brawl wasn't competitive due to tripping and Melee's community rallied against the game heavily when Evo considered bringing Smash back to the tournament's voting line up which ended up getting Melee back into the tournament. Melee was kept after that purely because of numbers even after S4 arrived as it still generated views for sponsors despite the fact that S4 had the biggest showing for Evo until DBFZ turned up that's why the were two Smash games at EVO for a while because they were doing the donkey work during a time tournaments were having a tricky time as SFV was and still isn't the spectator sport people hoped for, Marvel just fell while the other games simply didn't pull in as much numbers the result was that Smash's huge popularity had to do a lot of lifting and it did it just fine.

Today however the scene is a bit more healthy as DBFZ and Tekken generate views and SFV despite it's woes maintains decent viewership meaning they don't need two Smash games to do heavy lifting and can promote and push other games and communities this is why Melee is being dropped from non Smash Specific tournaments.

Ok I see where you two are coming from, you basically arguing from a developers point of view or someone who gets into every new fighting game, that's a fair stance.

What I say is the more a game gets independent from its developer/publisher the more legitimacy it gets as a sport. For me EVO should be the event where the champions of the most competitive fighting games get determined and not a promotion for the newest games (that does not mean that only old games should be at EVO).

I only recently started to pay more attention to the fighting game community so maybe you guys just see it differently.