Nintendo Community Tournament Guidelines

The Nintendo Community Tournament Guidelines are a series of regulations raised by Nintendo Co., Ltd., placing restrictions on the operation of unlicensed tournaments involving Nintendo games and media, including competitive Super Smash Bros. tournaments. The guidelines were first published on the Nintendo of Japan website in Japanese on October 24th, 2023, and were released on the company's European and American websites the same day; they will go into effect on November 15th, 2023. The announcements were quickly spread on social media shortly following their publications, and received widespread backlash throughout the competitive Smash community.

Summary

New regulations applying to unlicensed tournaments include the following:

• All tournament organizers and organizations without a license from Nintendo must complete an application in order to gain permission to host a tournament.
  • This does not apply to tournaments that were announced before the date of release of the guidelines, and are scheduled before the end of 2023.
• Tournaments must be capped at 200 entrants for in-person events, and 300 entrants for online events.
• Entry fees must be capped at $20/£18/€20/¥2000 per person.
• Prize pools are capped at $5000/£4,500/€5,000/¥500,000 for a single event, or $10,000/£9,000/€10,000/¥1,000,000 for a single tournament organizer across an entire year.
• Spectator fees must be capped at $15/£14/€15/¥1,500 per person.
• Tournament organizers may not receive goods, services, money, etc., from third parties as sponsors.
• The names of Community Tournaments may not contain Nintendo trademarks or IP.
• Pirated or modified versions of Nintendo games may not be used.
• Only online servers officially provided by Nintendo may be used.
• Tournament organizers must publicly acknowledge that the event is not sponsored by or affiliated with Nintendo.
• Tournament organizers must publicly post a URL linking to "Terms for participating in and viewing Community Tournaments using Nintendo Games."
• Tournament organizers must obtain separate rights for the usage of any intellectual property rights from third parties.
• Tournaments may not involve the sale of food, beverages, and other merchandise.
• The usage of game consoles and accessories not produced by Nintendo is prohibited.
• Any content or practice deemed "inappropriate" by Nintendo not already mentioned is punishable in type and severity at their discretion.

Reactions

The announcement of the guidelines was met with skepticism throughout the Smash community, amidst fear that the regulations would lead to the curtailing of local and regional tournament scenes. The guidelines were viewed as another reflection of Nintendo's anti-competitive stance, in a similar manner to its attempted cancellation of Smash World Tour 2022 a year prior. Many community members, especially within the Melee scene, feared that the guidelines' implications meant that online tournaments using Slippi (such as Coinbox), as well as the usage of box controllers and Universal Controller Fix, would be banned. It was soon discovered that the Japanese website only allowed organizers to apply for licenses to host Nintendo Switch games, leading to fears that hosting licensed Melee events could become completely impossible.

Other concerns include tournaments having a hard limit on the amount of revenue they can earn and sponsors effectively being forbidden will lead to some no longer being able to financially break even, a prohibition on food and drink vendors potentially being illegal under certain circumstances, and the ban on inappropriate content being a catch-all that means Nintendo can go after anyone for any reason regardless of how well the other rules are being followed.

Many community members (including Hungrybox) did a live read-through of the guidelines on stream. Montana State Representative Zooey Zephyr (and competitive Smash player under the tag Cazcom) posted a tweet criticizing the new regulations, saying, "Imagine Bicycle Playing Cards insisting your home poker games be played a certain way or they'll sue you." The same reaction occurred to other people outside of the Super Smash Bros. competitive community, if not the entire community, as the guidelines applied to any Nintendo games with competition, such as Splatoon 2 and Splatoon 3, Pokken Tournament DX, or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. YouTube commentator Omni said this case "looks like the end" for any non-profit tournaments.

On the other hand, several players reacted more positively to the guidelines, with some mentioning security breach issues and major controversies that happened in some tournaments or within the community, such as VGBC or the 2020 Super Smash Bros. sexual misconduct allegations. YouTuber Technicals notably reacted with pride, claiming it was "his perfect victory", which caused strong reactions from the community. In addition, many tournament organizers within the Japanese Smash community reacted with less skepticism. Within hours of the announcement, many prominent Japanese TOs came up with several solutions on how to deal with the guidelines.

Aftermath

Shortly after the announcement, the GENESIS team tweeted that GENESIS X would continue as scheduled. Sumabato head TO Nojinko also announced that he had secured licenses for the next ten Sumabato events within a day of the guidelines releasing, leading some to have cautious optimism towards the change.