Nintendo's Updated Guidelines For Tournaments & Content Creation Sparks Community Backlash

Gamers are mad again? Looks like a day that ends in “y”. I suspect there are legal reasons for these changes.

How dare an IP holder protect their rights!

How dare they tell me I have to get a license and follow their rules if I run a for-profit event to make myself money off the hype around their properties!

People still hadn't realize that Nintendo aren't their friends nor had ever like them.

Will this kill competitive Smash and/or Splatoon? No, probably not. It'll just make real growth near impossible for grassroots communities like these, especially Splatoon which still has a pretty niche competitive scene. Some of these tournament rules are SO stupid though. We have highlights like:
"Games with online play must use the online gameplay services and/or servers officially provided by Nintendo" meaning there will never be another legal online Smash 4, Brawl, or Splatoon 1 tournament
Most of Q3, including but not limited to sponsored tournaments being banned and outlawing sale of food and drink
"Nintendo games may not be used for Community Tournaments that involve anything Nintendo deems inappropriate" the classic catch-all, if your face looks kinda funny the tournament's dead bozo
"Organisers will make sure that Participants and Spectators are of age according to the applicable age rating of the game used in the tournament" this one is just funny to me, if you're 10 you can watch Splatoon perfectly fine but it's scarring if you're 9!
Yes, as the IP holder, Nintendo has the right to do this. That doesn't automatically mean it makes total sense though! Apparently getting an official Nintendo license isn't too difficult and can be done in bulk (a JP Smash organizer got licenses for their next 10 events within a day), and I assume getting a license makes running a tournament in general much easier and gets Nintendo off your back with a lot of these guidelines.
TLDR, this is a silly update in a lot of ways, but it ain't gonna completely shut down competitive Smash/Splatoon like people are making it seem.

@Slim_in_Blue

Why does this always happen? I wish you could see how your being manipulated by stake holders in e-sports into believing and spreading a completely inaccurate message.

You need a license to run a for profit event. Period. It's so Mario's face isn't plastered on a Splatoon's tournament raising fund for Gaza or a far-right PAC. It is not unreasonable. It's actually insane that they even issue licenses. Go ask Disney what the process is to apply for a license so you can charge for an Iron Man viewing party.

Everything you are saying is banned is 100% allowed if you get a license. I think Nintendo telling people they can't sell food if at an Nintendo event if they can't make sure you have food inspectors and safety standards ... good. Like, really really good. Some people don't understand small events aren't sponsored by Nintendo and may assume things are much safer then they are.

People who want to make money but know Nintendo would never grant them a license always try to make people freak out over the terms of service. It's silly. Even 1 of the comment featured in this article is a legitimate tournament organizer saying "this is no big deal and completely standard".

Please note: the speedrunning post from @shredberg is completely satire and is not part of official Nintendo guidelines.

@HeadPirate Nintendo overprotecting their IPs inevitably hurts the very consumers who buy their games. This will likely discourage people from buying their competitive games, and that will hurt Nintendo in the long run.

@Savage_Joe

Telling people they can't sell food at a event highlighting a Nintendo IP unless they agree to prove they follow food safety guidelines isn't "over protecting". It's basic common sense.

Do you have an actual example of "over protecting" and an actual example of where it causes more harm then allowing unregulated events? Keeping in mind NONE of these restrictions apply if I prove my event is above board and get a license.

@HeadPirate
First, I'm not being manipulated by anyone. I've never followed competitive Smash to any extent and passively follow Splatoon competitive because I like Splatoon a bit too much. This is from reading the guidelines myself and forming my own opinion.
Second, I never criticized the banning of for profit tournaments, although I should've clarified that in my original comment, that one's on me. I'm mostly mixed on that but I can't say I'm against it necessarily. That would be profiting off of Nintendo's IP and that is very legally gray, so it is reasonable that they'd want to cover that. That said, many tournaments as it stands are run by volunteer organizers and at best make the tiniest bit of profit, so it's a bit redundant when it's so hard to profit as it is without just being a bit scummy which the guidelines generally cover (ie, banning pay-per-view livestreams, which is actually a good move in my book).
Third, I DID mention that licenses are looking to be pretty easy to get and that they do a lot to get Nintendo off your back. I never tried saying they were anything other than that.
I do still think some of this stuff makes no sense, stuff like age restricting tournaments for a game rated E10+ here in the US is silly when Nintendo is known for being generally safe for all ages, with the occasional exception like Bayonetta. Again, I don't think these will kill Smash (well, Ultimate specifically, Melee is gonna get hit hard by this especially when you can only get a license for Switch games) or Splatoon, but I do think they'll stunt their growth to some extent. Working without a license will be a huge pain in the butt, and if you can't get a license for whatever reason, you're just kinda screwed. If that happens frequently enough, it could absolutely impact the growth of the competitive scenes, but it won't kill them entirely. And hey, we all know how many people want to play Melee competitively and will ignore any rules necessary to do so, Nintendo will run out of paper for cease and desists within a week if they really enforce this.

@HeadPirate
My college friends can no longer hold a small campus game of smash with friends for a $20 gift card to Olive Garden without being sued.

Smash now has an absurdly huge collective of IP under its hood including Disney. They're never going to be relaxed with this game when so much brand equity is on the line, particularly after all those Smash players were exposed for illicit conduct. The risk of taking a hit on their golden goose or running afoul of one of the many companies involved in Smash is surely bigger than a tiny dent in sales from a niche community pretending they won't buy Smash Ultimate+ on Switch 2.

@GarlicGuzzler

That's fantastic that your friend wants to run that event!

Let's consider them beside another person, who want to run a "Abortion is murder" Smash event. Instead of a $20 gift card, the prize is a $20 donation to an anti-reproductive rights group of your choice.

Do you have a plan that allows Nintendo to blocks that event without blocking your friends?

Sadly, nether do Nintendo. So they have to prevent both. This is the real world. Nintendo can't be associated with an political or social movement, or religious organization, but it's legally complicated to flat out restrict access to a product or service based on those factors. Best case the optics are horrible. So they instead approve licenses on a case by case bases.

I'm sure you'll have just as much without the gift card though. Also make sure to ban out Steve.

@Slim_in_Blue

Nothing you're saying is unreasonable, but as a rights holder you have to be extremely careful.

Nintendo doesn't care if you run an event and break the rules, as long as no one sees it and they don't get associated with your rule breaking. This is about removing your content from any online presence and making sure you can't monetize it in any way. If they can stop it from being profitable, they can stop it from being prevalent.

It costs Nintendo nothing, not even paper, to send this list of restrictions to YouTube, and at that point, keeping offending content of it's platform is YouTube's problem.

There is also a legal concept of "burden of care". Let's say a parent lets their child go to a event because they thought it was officially associated with Nintendo, and something bad happens at the event. Nintendo is 100% liable unless they can show they make a reasonable effort to shut down unlicensed events and limit what you can do without one, and show that the person running the event could reasonably be expected to know Nintendo forbid it.

That's the point. Enforcement is largely irrelevant.

Locking your doors restricts access to your house. It means you can lock yourself out. I mean someone couldn't enter in a legitimate emergency. But we do it, because as much as that sucks, we are preventing possibilities that are much worse.

The only reasonable guideline here is probably the one talking about how there shouldn’t be any tournaments supporting political topics and such. Almost everything else is complete bull***** and there’s no denying that. Yes they have the right to do that but it doesn’t mean it’s right. If you can find me any evidence how tournaments actively hurt Nintendos brand, be my guest. They’re hurting themselves by getting overwhelmingly negative press every time they make a decision like this. If you’re defending this, maybe you should wonder what inclines you to mindlessly defend a company that clearly hates their consumers such as yourself

@HeadPirate IP holders shouldn't have rights to control users. Only to protect sales. And this is control of how the game itself is used. If one doesn't follow guidelines, Nintendo enforces copyright instead of turning a blind eye. I don't think they should have rights to turn a blind eye sometimes, and enforce other times. It's too messy.

An aside regarding modification and fanwork, I only have beliefs here, that only modifications that replace existing works should be struck down. I do not think this part is strong enough to debate, as it is not wholly definitive. Please respond to the first part instead.

@TheSaneInsanity "Only protect sales" So basically protect things that would make you money using their IPs.. like tournaments.

Also there is a big problem with "only protect sales" as well, because if you don't sell something doesn't allow someone else to make an illegal copy of it. Or use it without permission (tournament). Also if you give someone permission to use it, you get to decide whatever rules you apply to that permission.

Another day, another storm in a teacup article from Nintendo hype.

This doesn't really affect me since I never go to tournaments, much less do any Smash online.

My guess is that this was proactive on Nintendo's lawyers' part, to shield the co. from any current political events, such as Israel & Hamas, since this particular topic is currently discussed, protested, and rioted about on a worldwide scale. Lawyers get paid to proactively comb through, and stop potential legal problems, before they start. It just so happens that the lawyers wisely went all-in, as opposed to just dealing with current issues.

I'm not a tournament player or organiser but I hope for the ones that are that this won't hinder them too much. This whole thing just seems silly to me. Like, protecting your IPs, sure. Not wanting to be associated with certain things, sure. But some of these restrictions just go beyond that.

If a tournament happens to host a Nintendo game, then imho, the only rule that Nintendo should set is that the tournament should mention that the tournament in question is not in any way associated with Nintendo themselves.

This feels like your local vacuum cleaner's factory enforcing rules where events can't have their vacuum cleaners used to clean up. Before, during, or after. Because God forbid someone associates your vacuum cleaning company with stuff in that event.

This is basically that. Just because Nintendo products are there doesn't mean it's associated with Nintendo and imho, it's real silly of Nintendo to enforce this. Like, trust organisers to be able to host their tournaments in an orderly fashion. And if they don't, then that rule where they should say that Nintendo is not associated with the tournament should be enough.

Of course having a few more rules is good, such as going against piracy, but overall Nintendo is just being too strict here, if you ask me.

@Yosher Many people don't read the "fine print", and even if the event hosters broadcast, or otherwise advertise their event as not being associated with Nintendo, Nintendo just doesn't want the slightest bit of association. This is just Nintendo being ultra-protective of their brand.

I will never understand many peoples logic regarding ownership and how they feel that something that is popular loses that. To bring it down a few levels, if I woke up this morning and found someone started selling stuff from my back garden then I have an issue with that, and even if I did decide that they could then I would have rules.

@Captain-N Too protective in this case, if you ask me. They'll be absolutely fine if an event that happens to host one of their games goes out of hand somehow.

And 99% of nintendo gamers shrugged their shoulders and continued to have zero interest in these competitive scenes until their inevitable next round of scandals are reported.

Fair play. They asked that Smash tournament to license for 2023/2024 and to NOT cancel their current cup, but the tournament threw a hissy fit and cancelled it anyway.

Then all the misconduct and illegal stuff came out about some top players, then the other drama happened, then Nintendo tried again with an officially licensed event and that fell through because low and behold it's all abusers baby.

This is them now saying sod it, we aren't letting you lot within 500 miles of our brand without a license that they seem quite happy to give should you be above board. And that's fine.

I don't follow the tournament scene, but as someone who does have a vested interest in content creation (myself, I'm trying to get into the VTubing scene) I always pay attention to Nintendo's guidelines when it comes to content creation.

I do understand that they have a brand to protect and an image to maintain, but I have always felt that they were overly strict when it came to content creation while their colleagues and competitors in the industry were more lenient.

I cannot speak for other people, but whenever I saw Let's Plays of video games on YouTube, it inspired me to try those games out for myself, including Minecraft, the original Spyro trilogy for the PS1, Assassin's Creed, and even some retro games.

So in my case, watching these videos basically served as free advertisement for video game companies, which in turn boosted sales for their developers. Nintendo would be mad to refuse to be a part of that.

Furthermore, as someone who loves Nintendo's franchises, I would love to get the word out to people that they are games worth playing, not just watching someone else play. I fail to see why content creators have to be punished for that.

@HeadPirate
There is such a thing as making too much sense. You make too much sense. Kudos on the well-reasoned arguments and great examples.

I'm honestly surprised there even is a Smash tournament scene at this point. It just seems to be more hassle than it's worth. Most of these tournament organizers would be better off just running a different game instead.

@dew12333 It's a frustration that the idea is everywhere yet you can do nothing with it.

Is anyone really shocked at this after the massive abuse scandal? I'm honestly surprised this didn't happen sooner. Also 99% of people complaining about this will still buy the next game on launch day.

(replacing old message to add context to convo, otherwise I'm peacing out)@sanderev preventing piracy is protecting sales, controlling a tournament is not protecting sales at least for people who actually know a thing or two about how brands work, for people who can't tell their brands from their behinds, it is protecting sales.
My issue is that controlling how a user uses your expression is not a form of protection offered for most forms of expression (Look at people quoting eachother out of context on twitter, unregulated.). So that is a reason I disagree that games should have the same protection. that is a form of me disagreeing with it, I'm sure I can find others if I'm pressed.

For those content creating, this is the risk of using someone else’s property to create or profit. Sucks but these are the rules. You can always try your luck with someone different’s property.

As for the fact that Nintendo still has say and control of property that is in some cases over 50 years old (Donkey Kong arcade 1981), that is just yet another sign that copyright is broken. If I had time, money, or desire; I would be tempted to start holding a Classic Kong tournament/stream just to throw a finger at both Nintendo and corporate entities’ continued legalized theft of the public domain

Dumb move by Nintendo. Which is to say, Nintendo move by Nintendo.

@HeadPirate You certainly have a generous notion of "protecting an IP."

Actually insane. Nintendo needs to get over themselves.

Protect your brand by changing the rules to reduce/entirely remove accessibility options which are generally third party as you're not providing them yourself or only half way so runs into the same problem. Genius.

They were trying their hardest to hold back their wrath, but the flower telling you the first letter in it's name was just too far. I wouldn't be surprised if they just disappear from the game. Thanks a lot, modders, it was hilariously stupid, but we can't always have what we want. The weed pulling business in the Flower Kingdom is going to be huge now.

@Yosher To me, it's a case of, "This is why we can't have nice things." Because Nintendo is ultra-protective of their IP, they don't want to take chances, especially in our world's current heightened political tension, and Nintendo's lawyers took the opportunity to give a bit of overhaul to their rules for tournaments, and content creators. In the case of Smash, there was some sort of abuse scandal, as well as a vocal segment of the tourney scene complaining about wanting to use Slippi, which as I understand it, is a modified Smash Melee. I suppose after one, or two occurrences like that, Nintendo just says enough, and goes straight to stringent rules to protect their brand.

@Darknyht Not being argumentative. Donkey Kong is 42yrs old. Edit: Copyright laws really do need to be modified, especially to accommodate digital downloads. As an aside, I think some of the deterrents to digital-only are current copyright laws, and digital license laws; such as being able to transfer a digital license for monetary value, for example.

thankfully Nintendo won't be able to do anything about it outside of the US/EU/Japan

@GarlicGuzzler Why not? $20 is way lower than the maximum $5000 to go without a license. Assuming the small group is less than 200 people and they aren't selling stuff or making a profit, if there's an admission fee it all goes toward the cost of putting on the event, it doesn't seem that it would fall outside of these guidelines.

Anymore you need to be extremely careful with images. If something bad happens at your tournament and there's anything that can tie it to nintendo, you better believe there will be lawyers trying to sue nintendo over it if they can make any sort of connection they're going for those deeper pockets.

Also if an incident occurs at an event the news sites are definitely going to mention it in articles that nintendo games were being played. The articles rarely mention that an event is not endorsed by nintendo either so it's easy for the more hysterical types to assume nintendo has something to do with it.

There are plenty of things that could go wrong that nintendo doesn't want to risk. Poor food handling, fire, people who may be bad actors. If there's any chance that those kind of things could be tied back to nintendo they would probably prefer to mitigate it as much as possible.

Other things I do think they have to be protective of how their ip is used. It's all too easy for your mascot to become officially listed as a hate symbol. There's more than a few things throughout history that's have been turned into hate symbols. The mandala becoming recognized as the nazi symbol or pepe frog being turned to a symbol of white surpremists. (That second one could be wrong, it might of always been intended that way just something I read years ago.) There was a rom hack of super mario world that contained Ugandan knuckles which I am sure is the types of things that nintendo doesn't want near their ip.

There's even the possibility of many of these changes being made to conform to various local laws. I could see a government out there feel like a 9 year old that went to a tournament where a game marked for 10 years or up might get nintendo under the microscope if said government felt nintendo potentially sanctioned it.

Most of the stuff I do see as fairly reasonable, the gameplay stuff about not being able to upload raw footage is a bit silly to me. Maybe there is some copyright law I'm not aware of but I still think it's dumb. I do know that Japanese law protects ip holders to the point that if I understood the wording correctly allows anyone who worked on a copyrighted work to object to it and the company protect the copyright. With how it seemed to read technically would allow Bill who played back up trumpet in the soundtrack to object to unauthorized use of their music and nintendo would have to agree to that.

EA, Blizzard-Activision, Riot, Epic, etc all have similar rules regarding community tournaments. People are freaking out because it's Nintendo and they're conditioned to freak out over anything Nintendo does. None of these rules are a big deal, if you want to make a profit using Nintendo's games, get a license, I really don't see how that's unreasonable.

@TheSaneInsanity

Sorry, Nintendolife flagged and deleted my reply to you. I'll try again.

So let's say BAD PEOPLE starts using Mario as the face of their BAD organization. Start mass processing Posters that say "Let's-a-go DO BAD THINGS, THINGS SO BAD YOU CAN'T EVEN MENTION THAT THEY EVEN EXSIST WITHOUT GETTING YOUR POST DELETED!". They then start using the popularity of Splatoon and Smash to organize large scale non-profit events. They use modified ROMs that include images that glorify BAD acts and include pro-BAD messaging, and the events themselves also have recruitment areas (for the bad things). To be clear, nothing they do at the event violates any laws.

Do you think Nintendo should not have the right to step in and stop that because it's not for profit and stopping that wouldn't be a move that directly protects sales? Do you think that the right of an individual to run an unlicensed Smash event outweighs the right of a global organization that employs thousands of people to control how the brand they spend millions advertising is used?

If so, I couldn't disagree more.

Nintendo never "turns a blind eye". Enforcement is either viable or it isn't. It's unreasonable to say that unless Nintendo wastes billions of dollars on an international enforcement team that deals with 100% of all violations they shouldn't be allowed to focus on cases like the BAD PEOPLE scenario. It's just math. Some suits from marketing tell you the estimated value of the damage being done to your brand (x), and some other suits tell you the cost of enforcement (y). If x is less then y, you don't do anything.

If that wasn't the case, Nintendo (and literally every other rights holder) would go bankrupt tomorrow. Unless you're suggesting Nintendo should be able to sue someone who runs to 10 person Smash event that broke the rules for the $100,000s of dollars to cover the cost of enforcement. That's a viable solution, although I'm not sure I agree it's the right way to go.

This argument has happened a million times and it always comes down to real world thinking virus unrealistic fantasy. There is a strong vocal minority who tries to argue how things "should" be in a perfect world where you can allow "good guys" to do whatever they want without opening yourself to legal liability and brand exposer because not everyone is a "good guy".

I also would like to live in that world.

But I don't. So I make arguments about what Nintendo should do in this one.

This should make for a fun moon channel video.

Honestly I blame the Smash community for this when you look at the last few years of negative fiascos when “left unattended”. Nintendo doesn’t want to be associated with that crap especially when said community rejected them multiple times.

@Haruki_NLI

My point exactly. Feels like this could have been easily avoided if the Smash community wasn’t so venomous with working together with Nintendo and you know…didn’t deal with pedo allegations, death threats, etc.

@Captain-N No argument. One should not attempt to do math at 5 am when they first wake up. It doesn't really change the point much. Nintendo (or any corporation) shouldn't be able to look up culture for generations. By the time Donkey Kong reaches the public domain (barring any attempts to extend it even longer), the people who originally enjoyed it will be in their graves and the rest of the public will mostly not be able to relate to it (or possibly play it) in it's original form. If you doubt me, tell me how much you can culturally relate to the silent era films that are available on archive.org.

Culture moves too fast to be held hostage that long.

@HeadPirate

What happened was that there were abuse scandals and Nintendo hates mods because they interfere with the original creative vision (They don't hate fans lol).

You also said that Nintendo can't take down every tournament or copyright violation... but they can at least take down any that exist online, Music detection systems are very powerful, that's why they were able to put out these guidelines, they do turn a blind eye.

It's not a fantasy to fight for rights to use things we own, I do not live In LaLaland, If I was I would be suggesting that Nintendo allow piracy. I believe that copyright needs limits to how far it can control users. Things like taking videos and posting what they play, hosting events, even right to repair, which many companies use copyright and voiding warranties to fight. We do not enter contracts when we buy food, a wrench, or a puzzle (closest comparison to creative works I can think of). We can film these things, host events that involve them. I know that the public performance laws for copyright outright prohibit these things for games and other forms of media. Posting Elsa's Let it go should not happen, but having a video be taken down because it was playing in the background of something different, I could see fair use being extended. People even abuse copyright to cover up evidence of abuse (See Police using it prevent filming Brutality)

Many people claim fair use when backed into a corner with copyright, that's the only thing they do really.

I don't believe I have a strong enough arguement for modding. So I won't bother with that.

@chaser206 attack on character, dislike report, whatever this man.

@TheSaneInsanity what?

Reading the comments here, glad to see that the amount of people that see that this "community backlash over IP protection" is actually bizarre seems to be growing

Nintendo has by far the most valuable IPs in gaming. Other publishers don't have the same control because having their IPs on these types of tournaments is free (and sometimes very welcome) marketing. These places are not Nintendo's target audience, but they do make a ton of noise.