All the way back in May 2018, Vergeben said that Minecraft content would be present in Smash Ultimate, most likely as a stage or Assist Trophy. In September, he said in a leaked Reddit DM that he heard from two people that Steve could possibly be coming to Smash. Later in November, Vergeben made a rather suspicious claim that the Minecraft content was a boss shortly after all the bosses in the game were datamined.
Just to clarify, Vergeben never once said that Steve was for sure in, just that he heard murmurings of it happening.
Xenother, a GameFAQs user who used to speak to Vergeben and co. frequently, was VERY adamant about Steve being a fighter. At some point in 2018, he claimed in a GameFAQs thread (couldn't find the post) that a playtester back in August told him that a very incomplete version of Steve was playable in a playtest build, which doesn't make any since because the playtester on Reddit that leaked Isabelle, Plant, and Incineroar never mentioned Steve at all. Also, if Steve has been worked on since August, don't you think he'd be revealed by now?
Hitagi, a credible leaker on Reddit, was also very vocal about Steve being a playable character. He later made some pretty suspicious claims, such as a character from Granblue being likely as DLC (he later retracted this), Lloyd being likely as DLC, and a sword character from Nintendo being DLC.
Ryce, a credible insider on ResetERA, said that Vergeben's Minecraft claims are very suspicious and that he's never heard anything about Minecraft content. He recently claimed that he thinks Banjo is likely, but that's just him speculating.
PolarPanda, a Smashboards user who has been pretty credible as of late, was originally backing Steve as a fighter has recently been hearing conflicting things. Another Smashboards user who is really close with PolarPanda, Fatmanonice, said that the stuff about Steve he's heard in private hasn't been good and it's likely that Minecraft in Smash was just a red herring.
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