The Big House 2020, which had been changed from an in-person to an online event due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, has announced that their Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate been cancelled. The event’s organizers said that the cancellation is due to a cease-and-desist that had been issued by Nintendo.
Backlash against the move has been growing since the decision had been announced, resulting in Nintendo releasing an official statement about the matter. Nintendo says that “the upcoming Big House tournament announced plans to host an online tournament for Super Smash Bros. Melee that requires use of illegally copied versions of the game in conjunction with a mod called ‘Slippi’ during their online event. Nintendo therefore contacted the tournament organizers to ask them to stop. They refused, leaving Nintendo no choice but to step in to protect its intellectual property and brands. Nintendo cannot condone or allow piracy of its intellectual property”. You can see their statement in full down below.
“Nintendo appreciates the love and dedication the fighting game community has for the Super Smash Bros. series. We have partnered with numerous Super Smash Bros. tournaments in the past and have hosted our own online and offline tournaments for the game, and we plan to continue that support in the future. Unfortunately, the upcoming Big House tournament announced plans to host an online tournament for Super Smash Bros. Melee that requires use of illegally copied versions of the game in conjunction with a mod called ‘Slippi’ during their online event. Nintendo therefore contacted the tournament organizers to ask them to stop. They refused, leaving Nintendo no choice but to step in to protect its intellectual property and brands. Nintendo cannot condone or allow piracy of its intellectual property.”
Haha nintendo dont play.
I just realized that Melee is almost 19 years old now. Where has the time gone?
So this is really stupid when you know what “Slippi” is. Slippi is netcode that allows Melee to be played online with others, something you can’t do on the GameCube. It’s a online event because of the Pandemic and Nintendo is deciding to be this petty. This is mind boggling
I mean, it’s legal to make a copy of your GC discs in many jurisdictions and it’s easy to get your hands on a Wii to do it.
Let’s not pretend that majority of people who emulate games are pirating them. I’ve never met a single person who actually does it by legal means.
Nintendo just doesn’t want good things to happen.
Pass it on.
On one hand it is very illegal to do what they are doing, especially if they are making money off it (of course they would be). On the other hand, many of us are locked down and would love to have tournaments still and playing online is the only way to do it.
Solution: Big House people stop profiting off Nintendo here – it’s illegal. Make your event free. Refund everyone. Then Nintendo will let you carry on without issue.
“requires use of illegally copied versions of the game… Nintendo cannot condone or allow piracy of its intellectual property.” I have issues with this. You don’t have to be a pirate to play Melee online. For instance, when I play on Slippi it’s using a copy of the game that I personally ripped directly from my physical Melee disc that I legally own (in fact, it’s in my Wii right now). Nintendo’s just worried that Fizzi’s work with Slippi makes Melee’s online look a million times better than Ultimate’s, so they cut both games to hide how embarrassing the difference is. They should really just take a step back, take a deep breath, let go, and let us have this. Or work with the community and give us an official Melee HD that we all want so bad.
They should have just done as Nintendo ask in the first place, all they had to do was announce the cancellation of the Melee portion and simply moved on with just hosting Ultimate instead. Things would have been perfectly fine if they hadn’t refused Nintendo’s request, you can’t blame Nintendo for asking nicely first.
Nintendo (and any other video game company) have an infamous track record of ignoring people with radio silence, outside of DMCA/C&D-ing things they don’t like.
But what if we ignore their their DMCAs/C&D and see how they like it.
In layman’s terms, do they have any power over people if they don’t comply with their request. For all that person knows, there IS NO DMCA.
Nintendo: We issued a DMCA to shut down this project?
Fan: What DMCA? Nope, didn’t receive one of those.
or
Fan 1: Nintendo just issued a DMCA against us. And they’re just sent an email.
Fan 2: Who? Don’t know who that is. Now to delete this spam mail.
Nintendo didn’t actually ask them to stop before giving the C&D. The TO (Robin Harn aka juggleguy) was interviewed about it and talked about what happened. The TL;DR of it is that Nintendo has to check in with him about the tournament because they were partners the past 4 years, and they during that conversation they danced around the topic but never told him to stop until they gave the C&D after reporting it to their higher-ups.
Nintendo are paranoid, disgusting scum that still live in the past.
Sell an online-enabled Melee port then.
Piracy is a moral imperative against disgusting corporations like Nintendo.