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, not-for-profit, small-scale tournaments, run by individuals, 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 24, 2023, and were released on the company's European and American websites the same day, as well as the Australian one on October 25, 2023; they will go into effect on November 15, 2023. The announcements were quickly spread on social media shortly following their publications, and received widespread backlash throughout the competitive Smash community.

Background

It has been suggested that this article or section be split into multiple pages or sections. The reason given for the split is: Most of this information belongs on its own separate page that details Nintendo's relationship to the community. This section should serve as a summary of events, not a detailed dive into it. (Discuss)

This article or section is incomplete. You can help SmashWiki by expanding or finishing it. The editor who added this tag elaborates: More details on Smash's competitive history with Nintendo; history of Nintendo-sponsored events, etc. Lots to go over here that could help contextualize how we got here at all.

Nintendo has had historically rocky relationships with those that play their games competitively, but it is considered especially cumbersome with the competitive Smash community, due in part to series creator Masahiro Sakurai disliking the high entry floors that many fighting games are known for. Nintendo has offered scant support for competitive Smash players, only sponsoring and licensing a select few events throughout the years. As such, the community has developed a decentralized, grassroots approach to running tournaments, allowing them to run high profile events on their own. However, this decentralized approach has also meant that regulating the community and setting standards is extremely difficult, with attempts to do so, such as with the Unity Ruleset Committee, the SSB Code of Conduct Panel, and the Global Ban Database, causing significant controversy and ultimately failing at their intended goals.

The grassroots nature of the scene has led to skepticism about Nintendo's potential involvement with it. This became a common viewpoint in 2013, when they issued a shutdown of EVO 2013's Melee tournament livestream, which was itself a compromise made with EVO's organizers when Nintendo attempted to cancel the tournament entirely. With the inclusion of Melee itself being the result of a large donation drive, the announcement drew swift and intense backlash, ultimately prompting Nintendo to reverse its decision hours later and allowed the tournament to proceed with impunity. This tournament, which is credited for raising interest in the Smash tournament scene, also led many companies and esports organizations to turn their attention to Smash, with them beginning to offer sponsorships for tournaments and players. Smash tournaments also began having higher entrance numbers than other traditional fighting games despite its grassroots scene. Nintendo also increased their involvement, first by inviting several top players to the Super Smash Bros. Invitational at E3 2014, then by offering partnerships with several major tournaments throughout the next few years, allowing Super Smash Bros. 4 to thrive during its heyday. At the same time, however, Project M, a mod of Brawl that intended to make the game more competitively friendly and began drawing more entrants than Brawl itself, began to decline in presence over the legal issues surrounding it and eventually suspended development entirely. This was criticized by many Project M players, who were averse to letting Nintendo get involved if it mean they could not play their preferred Smash title in tournament again^{[citation needed]}.

During these times, the tournament scene continued to grow, especially with the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which holds the record for largest Smash tournament at 3,534 entrants at EVO 2019. Thus, a movement began in earnest to make Smash a proper eSport, which would allow for even bigger tournaments with higher prize pools. Although the increased sponsorship revenue made this likely, many in the community argued it would never happen until Nintendo themselves began funding tournaments. Since 2019, various esports titles, such as those made by Capcom and Electronic Arts, have been receiving community guidelines for their tournament scenes. This is in response to a rise in eSports industry trends, with China notably seeing eSports grow beyond traditional sports in popularity and seeing government support. As such, Nintendo's increased involvement was seen as a signal that they were slowly working their way into doing so, especially with the release of the competitively oriented Splatoon games.

Nevertheless, this support was called into question when the EVO Japan 2020 prize pool was announced. In contrast to the other games which had large monetary prize pools, the top prize for Ultimate was a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, with Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa saying that Nintendo had no intention of giving tournaments large prize pools. Many players realized that Nintendo was less interested in supporting the tournament scene and more interested in using it as a marketing tool^{[citation needed]}. As such, the grassroots side of the scene was emboldened, intending on running their scene regardless of what Nintendo had to say about it. This mindset was called into question in July 2020 when numerous people in the Smash community were accused of sexual misconduct; many players, notably top player Leffen, blamed the outbreak of these allegations on the community's decentralized nature, which enabled others to turn a blind eye to these events.

In November of 2020, Nintendo ordered the cancellation of The Big House Online over its use of Project Slippi in the Melee tournament. This was heavily criticized by the community, with them arguing that Slippi was the only safe way to facilitate a Melee tournament amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. After an anonymous "informed Smash insider" published a Twitlonger in response explaining Nintendo's history of inhibiting the Smash community, many other players and organizers came out with their own stories about their troubles with Nintendo, ultimately causing "#SaveSmash" to trend on Twitter. Many came to the consensus that letting Nintendo get involved would only hurt the community; as such, the announcement of the Panda Cup, an officially licensed North American circuit created with the partnership of Nintendo and Panda, was met with equal parts excitement and skepticism. The latter mindset was further emboldened by the cancellation of Smash World Tour 2022 after Nintendo refused to issue them a license to operate. Although Nintendo did not explicitly order its cancellation, the organizers interpreted their refusal to issue a license, and the fact they were not on the Panda Cup, as a legal threat and took what they believed was the safest course of action.

All of these have resulted in Nintendo's potential involvement with competitive Smash becoming a divisive issue in the community. While many believe it would help and is to some extent required to avoid being associated with controversy and bad actors, especially when players are involved in issues such as the aforementioned sexual misconduct, substance abuse, and murder investigations, believing the community has proven it cannot regulate itself, others believe it will only create more problems than it would solve, and enjoy the decentralized scene that the lack of Nintendo support has facilitated.

Summary

New regulations applying to unlicensed tournaments include the following:

• Tournaments must be capped at 200 entrants for in-person events, and 300 entrants for online events.
• Entry fees must be capped at US$20/£18/€20/AU$30/NZ$33/¥2000 per person.
• Prize pools are capped at US$5,000/£4,500/€5,000/AU$7,500/NZ$8,250/¥500,000 for a single event, or US$10,000/£9,000/€10,000/AU$15,000/NZ$16,500/¥1,000,000 for a single tournament organizer across an entire year.
• Spectator fees must be capped at US$15/£14/€15/AU$22.50/NZ$24.75/¥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.

It is possible to apply for a license either for a nonprofit community tournament or for a for-profit tournament. Licenses for nonprofit tournaments allow for easing up some restrictions, namely on the number of participants and on entrance fees. The specifics for for-profit licenses are currently still unknown.

Reactions

The guidelines immediately proved to be controversial upon their release. Many in the community viewed them 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, and would lead to the curtailing of local and regional tournament scenes. The Melee scene in particular feared that the guidelines would have a significant blowback on running events, as the Japanese website only allowed organizers to apply for licenses to host Nintendo Switch games. Furthermore, the ban on hardware and software mods led to fears that online tournaments using Project Slippi (such as Coinbox), as well as the usage of box controllers and Universal Controller Fix, would be banned.

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 outside of the Super Smash Bros. competitive community, as the guidelines applied to any intellectual property owned by Nintendo; whether released on Nintendo Switch such as Splatoon 2 and Splatoon 3, Pokken Tournament DX, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, or on unsupported Nintendo hardware. YouTube commentator Omni said this case "looks like the end" for any non-profit tournaments, soon after he uploaded a video reading the guidelines.

Others reacted more positively to the guidelines, believing they were a necessary and inevitable measure given the community's issues with safety and security that led to events such as the cancellation of Smash World Tour 2022 and 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.

Alex Jebailey, the founder of CEO Gaming, responded positively to the guidelines, noting that it finally gives tournament organisers direct paths to obtaining licensing. That in mind, he inferred that large-scale established events should have no issues going forward. This reaction accompanied a video on the topic.

Moon Channel, a lawyer-run YouTube channel, released a video giving some legal analysis regarding the guidelines. Moon Channel speculates that rather than necessarily "cracking down" on events, the guidelines.are more of an olive branch adopting to how U.S. copyright laws largely extend worldwide through trade agreements, resulting in legal grey areas and thus less certainty and more regulation by the company. To illustrate this point, Moon Channel cites Nintendo's hands-off approach with its fanbase in Japan. With Nintendo's uniformity in guidelines, Moon Channel posits that this was less of a crackdown à la fan games, but more of an IP protection measure. Moon Channel goes on to mention that while third-party controllers are listed as banned in the guidelines, this is actually a commonality in guidelines for most other game companies, and in Nintendo's own End User License Agreements, and is enforced as a general policy to protect their intellectual property rights. Furthermore, Moon Channel argues that these guidelines are for community tournaments rather than supermajor events, as stated in the guideline's introduction, and that by following these rules, it could aid in reconciliation between Nintendo and the Smash community at large. Thus, Moon Channel infers that they could result in a more stable community, criticizing big content creators for wanting to run unlicensed tournaments in protest, noting that while the full license agreement has not been published, said licenses being provided are discretionary.

Aftermath

Shortly after the announcement, organizers behind GENESIS X and Battle of BC 6 announced they would continue as scheduled. In additional, organizers behind the Umebura and Sumabato series announced that they had secured licenses for their events, with Sumabato head Nojinko notably announcing that he had secured licenses for the next ten Sumabato events within a day of the guidelines releasing. These announcements led many to have cautious optimism towards the new guidelines.

Currently, it is unknown if these guidelines will be applied to Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, mainland China or other Asian countries outside of Japan. It is also unknown whether these guidelines apply to countries in the Americas other than the United States, Canada and Mexico, to African countries besides South Africa, or to countries in the Middle East and North Africa region.

External links

• ゲーム大会における 任天堂の著作物の利用に関するガイドライン - Nintendo Co., Ltd. (Archive)
• Community Tournament Guidelines - Nintendo of Europe GmbH (Archive)
• Nintendo Support: Community Tournament Guidelines - Nintendo of America, Inc. (Archive)
• Community Tournament Guidelines - Nintendo Australia Pty. Ltd. (Archive)