I think this was just a sarcastic remark on all of the posters who saidbm Nintendo hasn't supported Smash for the past 10 years because of the recent sexual scandal the community faced.
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How Nintendo Has Hurt the Smash Community: anonymous insider reveals how Nintendo has actively worked against a Smash eSports scene
- Thread starter Atheerios
- Start date
I think this was just a sarcastic remark on all of the posters who saidbm Nintendo hasn't supported Smash for the past 10 years because of the recent sexual scandal the community faced.
Even still, it's a bit much to say one person speak for the entire community. That and Nintendo has supported the Splatoon community to the point that they have sponsors teams. Just using Google I found one team that have existed since 2016. I also found this: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2..._to_help_you_find_teams_and_enter_tournaments
So Nintendo has lend support to the community and it seems to be mostly positive (this isn't to say everything is rosy and there probably are real issues), athough the cash prizing does seem to suck.
But I think everyone with some inkling about what is going on knows that the Smash community isn't supported because it's completely grassroots with little involvement from Nintendo and Nintendo are control freaks, while the Splatoon community is a mix of grassroots and Nintendo being involved so the two entities coexist better.
Plenty of Melee players are sponsored. There's no connection between that and "support from Nintendo".
I don't know enough about the Splatoon competitive scene in order to provide more relevant input here, but from the esports angle was always pushed by the developers and they seem to have a solid (albeit small) scene.
Smash did partner with Nintendo in multiple occasions. It's definitely more grassroots than the more solidifed esports out there, but the scene existed for so many years it is much bigger in certain aspects (resources, events organization, community, number of active players).
Blur posted an interesting vid about the next steps:
I can't really comment on Esports aspect since from my understanding tournaments sponsored by Nintendo aren't the same as Esports. Namely, you can make a living off of Esports while you can't make a living off of playing Splatoon.
While Smash has partner with Nintendo several times, most of the big tournaments from Smash from my understanding is done by third-parties and individuals. While Splatoon seems to be a good mixed of Nintendo's sponsored tournaments and third-parties tournaments that are connected to Nintendo in some form. So I guess what I'm trying to say that Splatoon exist in a space where Nintendo wants them to grow and haven't shutdown any tournaments, while Smash existed in a love/hate relationship with Nintendo.
Point taken, but some Splatoon teams do get direct sponsorship from Nintendo, which doesn't seem to be the case with Smash.
The Splatoon competitive community is miniscule and much less organized so nothing they will ever do will get enough attention to bother Nintendo. If the community was larger and older it would run into the same issues that Smash does. Nintendo doesn't really support the community beyond what can be used for marketing purposes. Splatoon players appreciate what little Nintendo does but recognize that it's nowhere near the level of official support needed to make the game thrive, mostly they're just glad that Nintendo hasn't actively harmed things like they do with Smash, at least yet.
It would be small since it's only five years old, but that isn't really point. The point is that Nintendo wanted Splatoon to be a competitive game and purposely grew the community in such a way including actively trying to form local teams. It's impossible to say 'well, if it was older it would have the same issues' since Nintendo never tried to make Smash grow into a competitive community to begin with. So this was always an apple to orange comparison.
That and the community has thrived, it just isn't 'Eports'.
Aw, misread. I thought I read Nintendo sponsored teams, but it was really about Nintendo helping teams find sponsors and forming teams. My mistake.
This is what happens when you don't know enough about a subject and don't read properly.
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I think they're referring to the Japanese league that was made in a partnership with NPB, the Japanese pro baseball league. They drafted some top players from previous koshien tournaments and had some kind of league, though it got zero attention outside of Japan other than the initial announcement, to the point where I can't find a single vod or find out who won.
One thing to note here is that Blur has worked at Twitch for 3+ years and was heavily involved in most of the negotiations mentioned in the OP between Nintendo & Community & 3rd Parties.
Blur making the point that most of this thread is missing.
"We just want Nintendo to leave us alone."
No partnerships. No sponsorships. No assistance. No pot bonuses. No recognition. Just to be left alone.
"We just want Nintendo to leave us alone."
No partnerships. No sponsorships. No assistance. No pot bonuses. No recognition. Just to be left alone.
Because it was not public knowledge before, so there was no opportunity for condemnation at all.
Second, on Era, a recurring theme I see is "fire all the bad people into the sun", with the eventually added modifier that such is only an exaggerated expression of frustration, or that bringing nuance into it qualifies as gaslighting or detracting from the topic.
I guess moderation allows this mindset in order to facilitate a safe space.
lol, I was going to be shocked if they were supporting a team. Beyond being a conflict of interest, they threw in $25 in eShop coins per person as a tournament grand prize, they're not sponsoring anything.
Unfortunately, it is unrealistic for them to let their property be used like this.
I don't really understand what the Melee community expects to accomplish by cutting ties to Nintendo. This person seems to think that if they have no ties to Nintendo that they will receive less legal action and C & Ds from Nintendo, when the exact opposite seems more likely.
His strategy of trying to create a social media backlash against Nintendo also does not seem particularly likely to be successful to me. Nintendo does not have a good image when it comes to using legal action against fans of their games, but the Smash community has a very bad reputation right now. And let's face it, the Smash community's reputation has never been great.
It's a bad strategy to achieve a goal that is not particularly beneficial.
I disagree. They don't lose anything from allowing competitive Melee to exist. Their efforts to actually screw over the community are so disheartening. Finding out that they led Twitch and Red Bull on regarding a Smash circuit and then effectively blackmailed TO's in cancelling PM tournaments ('PM is the reason why we won't give you support') is disgusting behaviour.
I dread to think about the amount of time and effort they've put into actively attacking the Smash community over the years.
Do people actually think Nintendo was actually leading Twitch on with the Smash circuit? Because, that's a really dumb thing to think. Like, companies don't lead each other on for no reason. If Nintendo and Twitch were making a deal then that means that Nintendo was genuinely interested in it and it just fell apart because sometimes deals just fall apart for any number of reasons. They weren't having private conversations with Twitch for over three years just so they could "screw over" the Smash community for some nebulous reason.
It is unrealistic to expect a company to allow other companies to make money from its properties without having a say.
You think it's likely Nintendo will simply keep C&Ding Smash tournaments permanently? This is not only a huge PR nightmare from the fans themselves, but there are several other parties which would be affected by it (Twitch, Sponsors, Tournaments which run Smash, Esports Teams, Esports News Outlets, Streamers).
Imagine March of next year when in-person tournaments return and we have a big National such as Genesis (which has been historically partnered with Nintendo, run Smash & Splatoon tourneis before). Even if they don't partner this time, do you think Nintendo will simply issue a C&D so that they can't stream the event on Twitch? What about just streaming Melee on Twich, like Mango does for example, do you think Nintendo would go after that?
It doesn't make sense for Nintendo to do it, would be a PR battle and they have little to gain trying to shut down the community in this way. Especially when Ultimate is so important for them moving forward.
But then they are not "leaved alone." .
They will just continue to ignore the scene or be okay with smaller events and streams, unless bigger tournaments promote emulation, roms, mods or work together with questionable parties. So like before.
Let's be real here, the Melee scene needs Slippy. I am not just taking about the Pandemic, but the Melee scene has a big natural problem of getting new players and not dying out. The game isn't produced anymore, so you have a finite number of new players and not every copy will go to new talents. This also means, that the few players will not get to practice locally with other Melee players. Slippy would solve a lot of problems. For the Melee scene this is an fight for suvival and thats also why emotion are extremely high.
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Yes, that is what I expect to happen as well also exactly the point Blur was trying to make. With the community cutting ties in terms of partnering with Nintendo, how much is Nintendo willing to allow basically.
They obviously won't be going after locals or just random streams, but what about Smash Con with 2000+ atendees? What about EVO if they bring back Smash? What if they now decide to run UCF?
I think you have to read this tweet in the context of NintendoVersus tweeting about this event. There were some Smash players who saw it as kind of "oh they C&D our (a much bigger competitive game) events but support Splatoon".
It's true that NA Open prizes are a bit of a running joke in the community. That said the biggest merit of those events by far is getting new people interested in the competitive side of things. Participant numbers have always been quite strong compared to some fan organized events.
Regarding Nintendo sponsoring teams / helping teams find sponsors - this is not the case. I remember seeing a rumor like this a couple years ago but it was either completely false or just never came to fruition. The thing they did with NPB (baseball league in Japan) is not comparable.
Best events Nintendo has held have their grand prize being players getting flown out to some local event to compete. While it's true those events then don't have a grand prize in cash they are still nice events in itself. Nintendo has always treated players well with during those events.
Biggest difference between Splatoon and Smash is that in Smash (especially Melee) mods have always played a big part. Maybe in the past they could let go of Project M and so on but it's hard to see how Melee community would ever let go off Slippi. Of course this is only more of a pressing issue now thanks to the pandemic.
It's interesting to see where Nintendo will head with eSports. Currently they seem to be a bit on the fence about it. A lot depends on Japan where general atmosphere on certain key issues seems to be very different from west. In many ways Nintendo's treatment of Splatoon and Smash has seem to gone hand in hand so naturally people want to see Smash thrive as it's good for Splatoon as well.
Mods for tournaments are really a recent development in melee. Unless you are thinking the melee community is the same as the pm community which is not true
Yeah maybe "always" wasn't the best word to use since Melee has such a long history but I mean UCF was first used like 3 years ago now? So it's a significant time period in any case. PM is also something different. I don't really have enough detailed knowledge of the community to see how much they see things as "Smash" community and how much there is "Melee", "PM", "Ultimate" communities.
C'mon now.. Nintendo has been like this even before these recent predatory cases, etc. I'm more of a traditional FGC guy (Street Fighter, Tekken, etc) and you can't say that you don't feel bad for this community with what's been going on. Issues aside. There are really good people in that community still.
Some tournaments have specifically avoided using UCF just to please nintendo, even if top players complained. 3 years is a really short period imo compared to Melee's competitive age and UCF is not mandatory, just prefered by pros.
While there is crossover and some top players can perform really well in other games in the franchise, the different communities are generally very well defined and have their own top players/leaders. From my recollection, PM inherited players from all the other mods that existed in brawl era, they generally prefer mods. The Ultimate community comes from Brawl/Smash4, Melee and 64 are their own thing.
Y'know, if you look outside of Nintendo there are literally dozens of examples of games with scenes that have no connection to the developer and that don't operate events in fear that the developer will shut them down. Melee fans aren't asking for anything special, they're asking for the relationship that most other game communities have with the developers.
Smash summit 10 (which has never partenet with nintendo) ran a tournament using slippi and Nintendo let them do their thing. And it was a pretty big tournament since it had more than 50K viewers during the finals. Meanwhile Nintendo send a C & D to Big House for trying to do the same thing (granted the tournament format between the 2 is different). Nintendo has also already contacted Genesis and Shine in regards to slippi. The 3 tournaments Nintendo contacted are the ones that have been partners with Nintendo for the last few years.
How many of those examples use modified versions of the games? Capcom would bring the hammer down just as fast if someone was running a big enough Street Fighter 2 Rainbow Edition tournament; doubly so if it somehow interfered with whatever Street Fighter V tournament they were running concurrently in their purview.
The relationships most other communities are going to have with the developers are going to be inherently different due to the scale of alignment. There are 4 million copies of SFV out there, for example, and those players are highly likely to already be participating and otherwise invested in the community. Those companies are selling near enough to 1:1 to that audience so they can market and cater directly to them. That's not the case for the 20 million copies of Smash Ultimate out there.
I can think of plenty of games where openly modded versions are the norm and aren't at all disguised from the developer, especially when you compare like with like and consider that Melee is nearly 20 years old. Diablo 2, which has had something of a resurgence on Twitch (~5-10k viewers primetime), is almost exclusively streamed in a modded form. Admittedly, I don't think there is a single 20 year-old game that is as popular as Melee, but I don't see that as a relevant factor.
The argument you're making isn't really applicable to Melee anyway. First of all, for most of Melee's history tournaments were run on completely vanilla copies of the game, and it continues to be the case that whenever Nintendo is involved, the vanilla version of the game is used. Second - and you'd know this part if you read the OP - Melee TOs have, on multiple occasions, expressed a willingness to use the vanilla version of the game if doing so would make Nintendo happy. Third, UCF is barely a mod. If you disable the UI element, the only people who would notice that it's on are the people playing the game and even then only if they are pretty good Melee players.
~5-10k viewers doesn't qualify as "big enough" in this case, which is a pretty big factor you are overlooking. One central to the argument, even, so it's strange you would skip over that!
There's a disconnect you're overlooking as well here between the first two points you're making and the third, though I see you made sure to take a swipe at someone trying to discuss this with you. Melee tournaments are run on completely vanilla copies of the game and Nintendo seems to have no problem getting involved - and TOs seem to be okay with using vanilla versions of the game in order to get involvement with Nintendo. Seems to be in parity with what other scenes have going for them so far. So why do you feel afraid that they are going to shut down tournaments when both parties seem to be in agreement with one another and the terms set? As soon as UCF and other modifications enter the mix issues arise. You don't see what seems to be the issue and what turns a cooperative relationship into something more at odds with one another? It seems you don't need to be convincing me that UCF is "barely a mod", but Nintendo.
Do you genuinely think that this wouldn't be an issue in any other scene? If so, I have some bad news for you...
I've repeated myself so many times in this thread and the points you're making aren't new. The timeline doesn't support the proposition that the issue here is mods because there is close to zero correlation between Nintendo getting involved to shut things down and the use of mods. Again, if you read the link in the OP you'd already be able to put that together since UCF has only been standard at events since early 2018 and yet the Melee community has been having problems with Nintendo for at least fifteen years. Like the people who came in and said that Nintendo cancelled TBH because of what happened over the summer, you're completely missing the point because you don't have an even basic grasp on the facts.
EDIT: If twitch viewership is somehow central to your argument you can go ahead and explain how that's the case but it has nothing to do with mine. I only raised Diablo 2's streaming numbers as shorthand for "the developer is well aware that people are streaming their game in a modded form and have done nothing about it", which is a verifiable fact
"Close to zero correlation" is an interesting way of phrasing a correlation higher than zero.
I haven't seen anything in the twitlonger or this thread that seems to indicate that mods weren't a factor - and as much as I know you would like to focus specifically on UCF and draw a line of distinction between Melee and something like Project M, unfortunately things don't exist in a vacuum and that distinction isn't being made.
I'll reiterate what I said earlier - it's not me you need to be convincing on these points but Nintendo if you want to see any meaningful change in the community; but I'm getting a feeling that you might not actually want these changes that you seem to be advocating for.
EDIT: You're the one that decided to use twitch viewers as your metric to counter the point that other scenes have what appears to be a more tight knit relationship with the company that creates their game of choice because they have a more 1:1 symbiotic relationship of obligate mutualism with one another than the Smash community and Nintendo; just don't fool yourself into believing that the relationships those scenes appear to enjoy isn't just as tenuous.
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It's a correlation higher than zero, yes. One event with mods was cancelled versus dozens that weren't, and one event without mods was (initially) cancelled versions hundreds that weren't. Also, the evidence is pretty clear that Nintendo obstructed a bunch of "no mods" events before they could come to fruition as well as some events where the status was ambiguous or not determined.
Again, if you read the OP (or, hell, even like the last few pages of this thread), you would know that some high-up Melee TOs essentially made the decision to preemptively axe PM from their events explicitly to appease Nintendo on that point. You would also know that Project M was only a mainstay at events for a very short period of time and that, in fact, no Melee events were cancelled by Nintendo during this time!
The change I'm looking for is for Nintendo to fuck off and let us run our events in peace, which is roughly what the developer of every other game I play does. I didn't say "symbiotic relationship", nor did I say "obligate mutualism", and I sure as shit don't want the relationship to be "tight knit". I want Nintendo to go away because one correlation that is actually pretty clear to the Melee community at this point is that if you work with Nintendo in any capacity your event might be cancelled down the line.
Do some reading before you respond to this. It is obvious to me that you are missing a lot of key information.
User Warned: Antagonizing Another User
It seems you're getting confused by the big words so let me put this more bluntly for you: those other developers let you run your events in peace because they need you as much as you need them. Smash sells to a different audience to the tune of 5 times what most would arguably call the second biggest name in the scene pulls in. If you believe for a second that those other companies would continue to let you run your events the moment that arrangement changes in their favor or if you step out of line from the boundaries they have set, I have a bridge to sell you. Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but Nintendo isn't going to get any less litigious about this; so your options are pretty limited here. Fortunately enough, it seems you've made up your mind to impotently scream into the void about this instead of doing anything to actually improve your situation, so look forward to two more decades of Lucy pulling the football out from you, Charlie Brown!
The bolded isn't true. Hell, it isn't even true in the one example I raised, and there are a lot of examples. It also strikes me as an attempt to justify your making an argument that's incoherent when it is tested against the evidence, especially since you've provided no basis or reason why anyone should believe that that's why Nintendo has made their decisions.
You seem to think that Melee fans are confused why TBH got cancelled. That's a misapprehension, and your focus on answering that question really just demonstrates your ignorance of the situation. When you look at the whole picture, it is evident that - as people like Blur have said - the association with Nintendo is the problem. Events run with UCF and slippi all the time and they don't get shut down because they're not affiliated with Nintendo. Indeed, in the midst of all the #FreeMelee talk, Smash Summit 10 happened, which itself was hot on the heels of the summer of the Slippi Champions League, a Melee event that has the name of the mod they used in the title. LACS is happening soon.
You're confused, and that's fine - like most things, if you don't do the reading you're not going to understand what's going on - but we're not.
As an aside: I get a giddy little thrill whenever people start personally attacking me over the internet so thank you for that. Your defining "litigious" for me is particularly ironic considering what I do for a living, and that irony is just icing on the cake.
This for me mainly. I absolutely love smash and I loved watching a lot of melee and ultimate tourneys, but if I had a kid I'd not feel safe letting them be around that scene at all. Like at first I didn't understand why Nintendo was distancing themselves from the scene but like the more I thought about it the more obvious it became. The scene dug their own grave by continuing to prop up scumbags
They're not gonna C & D every single tournament, but they can and will C & D tournaments who are not partnered with them and they have in the past. And it's probably less of a PR issue to do it against people that you're not partnered with. They're not gonna take down random streams but if another major tournament is going to use slippi, then yeah, there's a good chance that Nintendo will take action.
Also it's not that costly for them to do these takedowns. It was not a PR issue for them to shut down the Big House tournament at all, no matter how much the community wishes it was.
No, you've got this backwards. Nintendo seems to target events that are affiliated with them, while letting unaffiliated events operate unabated. TBH - an affiliate event - got cancelled on the same weekend that Smash Summit 10, an unaffiliated event, happened. Similarly, TOs that had worked with Nintendo in the past were told not to host Slippi events while unaffiliated TOs were seemingly free to do so.
Truth be told I'm not sure why anyone is surprised that company is not thrilled that a organisation is using an emulator rather than the native hardware to run these competitions. Emulators are legal but I'm not any console maker bar Microsoft would thrilled at the use of emulators considering how many legal battles were fought and lost over them. Granted Sony would have likely made a HD version of the game eventually to be played on modern consoles than allow this situation to happen.
I've said this probably fifty times in this thread but here it is one more time: Nintendo has been obstructing the Melee scene's attempts to grow for well over a decade. We've only been using slippi for six months (and only because there's a global pandemic). In-person Melee events are invariably run on real discs using unmodified hardware. This has nothing to do with emulation.
lets hope this continues being the case in the future... scary stuff
Do you really think that in a hypothetical future where there are no Melee tournaments associated with Nintendo that they will just be okay with them using things like Slippi because they're not associated with them anymore? They will absolutely shut down tournaments that is using these things going forward regardless of affiliation. Assuming that what Nintendo is doing for the last couple of months is how they will operate for years to come is not forward thinking. They've shut down tournaments not associated with them and they will do so again.
No, to my knowledge Nintendo has never shut down an unaffiliated Melee tournament.
I'm not saying that will never change, I'm saying as far as the history up until this point is concerned (and I'm not just talking about the last couple of months) your post is backwards. Affiliation hurts, being unaffiliated helps. As I've said in other posts, we have had several big Slippi events this year and there's at least two more big ones on the pipeline. They're all unaffiliated. Meanwhile, TBH got shut down and a bunch of affiliate TOs were told not to run Slippi events. Since Slippi is currently essential to the Melee scene, the lesson very clearly is don't affiliate with Nintendo.
Evo 2013? They weren't successful in shutting it down but being unaffiliated is not really a deterrent.
The bolded part is most certainly true - the one example you raised was ~5-10,000 twitch viewers which, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure SFV and Smash pull in far more than that during big named tournaments. The basis for why anyone should believe that's why Nintendo has made their decisions is because it is clear as day that's what they are doing unless you've already decided beforehand that it must be a personal decision. This goes for what Blur said as well, which I am glad you brought up on your own - its almost as if these events are slipping under the radar because they aren't reaching a threshold of viewers or audience that garners their attention. Let's see what happens in the upcoming two events now that the Slippi genie has been let out of the bottle, but I'm not buying that you believe they would suddenly be totally fine with mods so long as they are unaffiliated.
At any rate, If you're fine with the scene continuing to be these small scale events, why are you opining over other scenes, their growth, and the relationships they have with developers? It's strange how you say Melee fans aren't confused by events getting cancelled because the fact that this thread exists begs to differ. A less charitable person would probably say that you're acting somewhat disingenuously here.
As an addition to your aside: I absolutely feel you on that one, it's why I love that you started with the personal attacks in our initial conversation. It's also why I totally understand your desire to do absolutely nothing to improve the community and instead opt to post about it. Feel free to share more with the class about your job in the posting mines, though.
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