My opinion on the whole "Free Melee" Tournament Cancelling Controversy

[Princess Rescuer]

Recently, even the Smash loyal has been up in arms about two major Smash tournaments being cancelled. There's been defenses of it saying "it's their property" which is true, but cancelling tournaments still isn't the best idea if they want to make money. It just makes me think "okay then, i won't bother wanting to get invested in this game, because when i'm good enough to be in a tournament, Nintendo will just cancel it".

The REALLY strange thing about this is that they have used Smash to endorse characters on other consoles and even outright advertised a console in a Direct, but now they're banning free promotion of their own game? Do they want to lose and become irrelevant? Because that's the steps towards doing just that.

Smash is big, but it is not Nintendo's biggest IP. As far as major multiplayer goes, Wii Sports, Pokemon, and Mario Kart are bigger. Even these are not indestructible. Being bigger just gives it more of a chance to fall harder.

 

[Alicorn]

You have to understand its Nintendo's IP they have unlimited authority when it comes to the promotion and use of their products.

From what I heard the hosts of The Big House cocked an attitude when Nintendo asked them not to use Slippy. So Nintendo retaliated by not letting them host Ultimate. Big House brought them upon themselves and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't know how Copyright law works.


The Splatoon thing could have been seen as promotion of Piracy because of the grey grounds of the Slippy Mod.

 

[Oddball]

I don't even get why this is a controversy.

People wanted to host a Nintendo approved tournament where everybody had to use illegal roms to play the game and they're surprised that Nintendo shut it down?

 

[Alicorn]

That's the gist of it Oddball, it basically comes down to. "How dare Nintendo tell me what to do!"

If Nintendo was acting like a tyrant I could at least offer my sympathies but when it came out that Nintendo at first asked Big House not to use Slippy and then Big House went along and did it anyway. It smelled like someone was kickin' ah hornet's nest and are mad that they got stung.

 

[Nah]

I should probably preface this with the fact that I'm not personally bothered by what happened and I haven't touched Melee in a long time

I don't even get why this is a controversy.

People wanted to host a Nintendo approved tournament where everybody had to use illegal roms to play the game and they're surprised that Nintendo shut it down?

It's sort of that while Nintendo is well within their legal rights to do what they did, was it really necessary to do it? What harm would've been done if The Big House was allowed to run the tournament?

The only reason Slippi is being used at all for tournaments is because we're still in the middle of a global pandemic and so obviously cannot hold large in-person tournaments. If we weren't, no tournament would consider using it.

That's why it's controversial, as far as I know.

Though the TOs did kind of cause their own problem by not taking Nintendo's initial offer to cancel just the Melee part of it, but I hear that there was never any chance of them going for that option.

 

[Princess Rescuer]

As I mentioned, it is illegal. But it is also illegal in a benign way and even directly benefits the company it's supposedly violating. Plus I doubt Melee players ONLY play it on emulators. You know they probably have real copies from all three main regions (J, U, & P) so how does this hurt sales? Plus it's a decades old game that Nintendo strangely has no interest in HD porting like what's been requested before Smash 4 was even announced.

The argument becomes weaker when they tried to shut down a tournament in 2014 that used real hardware. They just like shutting down free advertising and seeing communities grow around their games without them for some reason. I hope speedruns aren't next.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

But this isn't about real hardware.

This is a specific situation where they were using Slippi, which promoted piracy, and Nintendo kindly asked them to not use it while hosting it online.

They weren't giving them issues because it was Melee itself. If it was used via proper consoles and such, it would've been fine. Nintendo overall was being fair by avoiding piracy promotion. Instead of them using their head, the people behind the tournament ignored a respectable request and decided to use a program that did something that is actually against copyright law.

They deserve no sympathy for that. They damn well knew what they were doing and got shut down. Nintendo is not going to allow piracy to be promoted, nor should they. That in itself is illegal because it's stealing money from others.

Past events are problematic in their own right, I won't deny that. Though I get they want to push their current product that has every single character, so it's a relevant reason why, but it wasn't the case in this particular situation. I'll have more sympathy for tournament organizers when Nintendo actually acts like a tyrant. But they weren't here. Now any tournament using the console and proper copies being shut down I agree is taking it too far. Which is why it's... what, never happened since 2014 at best?

 

[Oddball]

As I mentioned, it is illegal. But it is also illegal in a benign way and even directly benefits the company it's supposedly violating. Plus I doubt Melee players ONLY play it on emulators. You know they probably have real copies from all three main regions (J, U, & P) so how does this hurt sales? Plus it's a decades old game that Nintendo strangely has no interest in HD porting like what's been requested before Smash 4 was even announced.

"You should let me break the law, even encourage it, because I'm helping you," is frankly about the worst excuse you could use.

Nobody is going to look at this and say that Nintendo allowed piracy in one very special set of cirumstances as long as everyody promises to not do it again. People are going to look at it and see that Nintendo allowed people to pirate their game and openly encouraged it. That's not just a slipperly slope. That's doing a high-dive off a cliff.

Do you think anyone they encourage to pirate their game is only going to pirate the ONE game? And how do you think that's going to stand up in court the next time they have an issue with piracy?

The argument becomes weaker when they tried to shut down a tournament in 2014 that used real hardware. They just like shutting down free advertising and seeing communities grow around their games without them for some reason. I hope speedruns aren't next.

That isn't even close to the same argument.

 

[Goomboi]

Nintendo also doesn't care if they piss off a few people. As long as families still buy their games.