"Free Melee" Becomes "Save Smash" Following Nintendo's Legal Action Against Competitive Smash Bros. Event

Nintendo being nintendo like allways, Nintendo never likes stuff like this so I understand to a degree, I mean using copy's of melee I can see nintendo being mad about that but the rollback netcode thing is stupid, but we all know nintendo they don't like mods whatsoever and will take down anyone who uses them. This is coming from somewon who does not know much of Big houses history so plz don't bash the heck out of me I'm just speaking my mind.

From my understanding, The Big House is sponsored by Nintendo, so this was a dumb business move on their part.

The notion that it was okay to host a modified version of a Nintendo game like it was okay under those circumstances will always be dumb.

Also, Nintendo was pretty shrewd, but they're allowed to legally enforce their rights.

@Snatcher Spoken like someone who doesn't own IP.

Waiting for those particular people to come pouring in and feel the need to defend a multi-billion dollar company for something they didn't need to do again.

@JuiceMan_V I agree fully I'm not trying to act rude with my comment, its just nintendo does stuff like this all the time so I'm just speaking from witch I understand if you know what I mean.

Just because they can doesn't mean they should.

I’m sorry but what does Nintendo offer as an alternative? Due to Covid, online netcode is the only way for these players to compete due to Melee lacking an online mode. I’m sure Nintendo’s official line is ‘just play Ultimate, our newest and most expensive game’ but that’s not good enough. Either make some Melee ‘Legacy Edition’ that adds online multiplayer or stop alienating one of the largest fanbases in competitive gaming. Fan fiction is legal, fan art is legal but anything fan related to video games? Suddenly that’s a big no no.

This is really sad honestly, Melee's never been in a better place. Slippi made the world of difference to me in lockdown and it introduced me to one of the most fun games and welcoming communities I've had the pleasure of being in. This hurts, you can argue that Nintendo have the right, but this is morally disgusting. Taking away online events in the middle of a pandemic is beyond awful.

From "rollback netcode" I'm guessing it means it uses an emulator. And thus an ISO.

I do have my Wii set up, so if I owned Melee I could very easily have made my own ISO from it (as I have done with the games I DO own). So that would not be piracy. (it's only piracy by Nintendo's self-serving definition of the term)
Though I don't own Melee due to it being an expensive common game, and I have other Smash games and fine with that, since I'm not a huge Smash player.

@nessisonett
"Fan fiction is legal, fan art is legal"
Don't give them any ideas. lol

@nessisonett Yep nintendo's war on mods won't stop, They make me so mad when they do stuff like this.

@nessisonett

Nintendo doesn't have to go back and retrofit anything in their catalog to please people.

How about just sticking to what's current? (Which is Ultimate).

It's frustrating watching people act like they're owed anything from a business while at the same time, get mad at people for pointing out the realities of business.

Nintendo is not our friend, they're here to make money.

Get ready for the people who are going to defend nintendo for this.

@nessisonett Nintendo did offer an alternative, they asked them to not do that specific thing. They refused, so Nintendo sought to shut it all down. That's what happens. And why should Nintendo have to offer an alternative to people wanting to do something they never intended, anyway? That doesn't make sense. Nintendo isn't out to make friends or lovers, they're a company selling a product.

Why does Nintendo still care about people modding a 20 year-old game.

@HobbitGamer They never intended online play in Melee because it shipped in 2001. The fact people still enjoy the game in 2020 should be celebrated. Look at the Sonic modders who went on to make Mania, the creators behind Slippi are talented people who make nothing out of this other than the pleasure of seeing people enjoy Nintendo’s game. All this will be is Nintendo trying to get Melee players to jump to Ultimate as they can still make money from that game. They make no money from Melee regardless if the game’s pirated or bought second hand.

Honestly I don't care what happens to melee elitists lol

I think the frustration is totally reasonable, don't get me wrong, but could the tournament still have gone if they just agreed to not have Melee?
I mean, I'm not informed enough on the legality rules in the US surrounding mods to discuss the fairness of it, but is anyone actually surprised that N doesn't want a mod of their game for a tournament they're sponsoring?

Guess I need to boycott Nintendo now. Damn it.

@Snatcher and everyone else like him. Do you know what intellectual property is? Do you know what it means to protect your own work so others cannot use it and get money out of your own work? Would you like to invent something, draw a project, create a song and have others steal your work and even get money out of it? Where do you guys live? Why don't you have common sense that hacking, modding is illegal? Why are you so silly in accepting theft as the normal practice? You cannot live by stealing other's work. Enough with this unethical thinking. Grow up!

@Cosats Dude, go join the FBI if it bothers you that much.

the Legal team at Nintendo who handed this down is probably far removed from anyone who has a finger on the pulse of the fan communities. They're a massive company with crazy high brand recognition and a hot product line. The legal team is always going to indiscriminately jump on any whiff of infringement so the big guys up top never have to worry about their brand integrity. The legal hounds surely don't care that it's an old game, a beloved game, or anything about it outside of it being their IP. The comparisons to Sega and Sonic Mania are ridiculous. Sega had nothing to lose, their IP was known for mediocrity and Sega has no modern hardware that their games would be used to sell. Not saying any of this is right, but this is how big corporations operate and this is a pay (hugely) to play legal system.

@Cosats Slippi is completely legal, and so is emulation if the iso is obtained from a disk, which can't be proven from an iso alone. Nintendo is in the wrong.

@TG16_IS_BAE Dude. Grow up.

@Yellow Who cares about slippi. The article talks about illegal copies. And who told you that emulation is legal when you pay an entrance fee? Are you serious?

if it weren't Smash-related I'd be very pissed off at Nintendo rn but I think the competitive community deserves it for being 99% garbage in general and ***** on me and my fic ideas

@HobbitGamer You're both right and wrong.
To be a company is to sell a product.
To be a GOOD company is to earn your customers' favour.
If you make yourself a disliked company then business isn't going to look down on you very well.
Nintendo wouldn't be where it is today if their customers weren't fans of theirs.
Doing something of poor taste just so happens to make you lose some of those fans.

@TG16_IS_BAE

Judging by your overly negative post history, it seems like you're already doing that.

@Cosats Which doesn't matter since legality of roms and isos can't be proven. The only people in legal danger are distributors of said roms and isos. Nintendo have no way of knowing if soneone playing Melee online is using a legally or illegally obtained iso, which is why they've lost lawsuits regarding emulation in the past.

@Cosats Hacking is illegal. Modding is not illegal. I literally have a whole class taught by a former white hat hacker that delves into what is and isn’t illegal in computer crime. You’re completely wrong. Slippi is not illegal even if it’s applied to an illegally obtained ISO. It’s the methods used to obtain the pirated ISO that are illegal. Even then, there’s no way to tell if an ISO was ripped from a legitimate disc or downloaded off the net. I rip my own discs, I’ve done it for years due to losing some games from wear and tear with the disc.

@KryptoniteKrunch Wow, an internet stalker. I’ll just block you right away to avoid the annoyance.

@Yellow

Nintendo's claim is that The Big House was going to use illegal copies of the game, on top of a mod.

One of them is a fact and not the way Nintendo released the original product.

And on top of that, Nintendo was sponsoring The Big House who apparently refused to comply with Nintendo's demands.

The Big House doesn't have much of a leg to stand on.

People feel like they're owned something when they're really not.

@Cosats I’m not the one complaining in the wrong place and at the wrong time. If you truly believe in what you are saying, but the extent of your input stops at this forum, then you might as well not fight for your narrow-minded ideal. If you truly in your heart of hearts believe the nonsense you are posting, then join a legal agency where you can actively do something about it, instead of just grousing in the forums every time. Walk your talk. Grow up, indeed.

@Cosats I never said it was ok And I on nether side like I said if you would take the time to read the comment I don't now much about big house so I can't give a good comment on it, but people like you don't do that.

@ReWane Nintendo cares because it pulls attention away from Ultimate. For that matter, I don’t have any sympathy for Nintendo right now. Instead of fixing their broken hardware, they waste resources on all these legal battles.

@Cosats You say grow up but your the one ranting.

@JuiceMan_V Well that's just a bare-faced lie on Nintendo's part, since the tournament's entrants all have their own individual iso of Melee, none of which were provided by Big House. Some of those isos, were legally obtained, some weren't, but it genuinely doesn't matter since it can't be proven. Nintendo's demands were to not have Melee at Big House, which is absurd. Personally I think this is just another desperate attempt from Nintendo to shut down emulation while blatantly ignoring the legality behind it.

@JuiceMan_V
"Nintendo says so, so it must be true."
Literally nothing Nintendo has stated is actually evident fact.
You can indeed use Slippi with legal copies of Smash Bros and Slippi by itself isn't illegal either.

Nintendo: We had no choice!

Everyone on Nintendo Life: Really?

_{Unoriginal Comments Productions}

Gotta love these articles that bait people into having arguments on whether or not Nintendo is being a hardass on fans over what they do with their intellectual property.
Fortunately I'm not a bootlicker, and I say let fans do what they want with a 20 year old game that Nintendo or them are not making a penny from anyway.

@Cosats everyone gangsta until the mii icon starts talking about copyright law

The Nintendo fanboyism in this thread is nauseating. You all do realize that mods and emulation is perfectly legal, right? Just because Nintendo is ran by dinosaurs that have their IPs so ham-fisted because of their lack of understanding of how the world's copyright laws work,(keep in mind, these are the same people who wanted people arrested for modding their Switches in Japan) doesn't in any way make them right and that goes for slippi as well which in no way damages their intellectual property. It's nothing more than Nintendo's ignorance showing once again and quite frankly, a lot of us are getting tired of it.

@Jakiboy Unfortunately I fall for the bait every single time because for SOME reason I like to hope that the majority is sensible enough to realise when Nintendo's being awful, fanboy or not. I guess we're in hard times though and if you got angry at the producer of your only entertainment, then being locked in your home wouldn't be very fun.

From what I heard they wanted people to use pirated copies of the game. You think Capcom would be cool with a major tournament telling people to pirate Street Fighter?

Or Mortal Kombat? Or any other major fighting game and their publisher?

This makes me want to cry .

If Nintendo was like Saga they would have hired the Slippi team to make a melee port, and improve Ultimate while there at it.

@Heavyarms55 Nintendo's statement would make you think that but that's just a flat out lie. Entrants have their own iso and how they get that iso is up to them, Big House has no influence.

@Yellow Yeah. If you say so.

@Heavyarms55 the thing is, this is different.

Copies of older Street fighter games that you can play online exist legally, but than for smash we had to use a modded ISO of the game to even get it working online.

@Kyranosaurus

I'm not saying everything Nintendo claimed here is true but AT LEAST one of them is true and that's all Nintendo needs.

And again, Nintendo was SPONSORING this company and their refusal to comply with demands for how they want their IP represented, makes the actions by Nintendo totally in bounds.

Like I said, the C&D was pretty shrewd, but it is what it is.

The problem is it was an online tournament involving a hacked emulated game that required people to pay their own entry fee. So understandably that is probably was set the lawyers off.

@Heavyarms55 You don't have to believe me, this is just tournament standard. No tournament tells entrants to pirate roms or provide said roms. This is the case for several recent tournaments of older fighting games, so don't blindly listen to Nintendo.

@Heavyarms55 Capcom releases its old SF games with online functionality on practically every console it can get its hands on. There's no world where a tournament organiser would be incentivised to use pirated copies. Nintendo always resists putting its Gamecube era games on newer consoles; legalities aside the bigger picture indicates a services problem.

This is a shame....Any community move they make seems to always get thwarted. I wonder if they could contact NoA for a solution.
I understand the protection of your IP/ licenses but it'd be nice if they excluded the "we had no choice." part.

@Kyranosaurus Telling folks not to use their product in a (highly publicized) way that goes against it's original usage intent isn't exactly a bad thing.

@LatsaSpege There's also the fact that Capcom would be in trouble if enough of their top talent rebelled against them and stuck to Super Turbo or Third Strike while refusing to play the current game. (Something like this happened with Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, contributing to Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite's commercial failure.)

With Nintendo, however, it's different. The handful of top talent in Melee is a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of casuals who see "Smash" and buy the newest, shiniest thing. Every Melee pro could swear off from Smash entirely in protest against this, and more power to them if they do. But the resulting loss would barely be a rounding error in Nintendo's financial statements.

Instead of just ineffectually whining, I'm beginning to wonder if calling Nintendo's bluff and challenging the legality of the ban isn't the way to go. It worked with the first emulators and, even before then, with video game rentals.

@HobbitGamer Against the original usage? You mean having fun at a safe distance? Did you know skipping to the 10th chapter in a book doesn't get you in trouble with the person who wrote that book? Not to be an arse but there's literally nothing wrong with what the event had planned and Nintendo knows this already.

@JuiceMan_V For something to be true, there needs to be proof. Nintendo doesn't have that unfortunately and is calling bluff like with 99% of their threats.

Edit: If Nintendo was sponsoring them sure, but they're still in the wrong for calling this off. They're practically spitting their dummy out because they want to hold the event online instead of risking people's lives.

Look, I get it. Nintendo has been unreasonably draconian and out of touch with some stuff like this in the past, no matter how well-intentioned the creators of the mods/software often were. It's also true that Ultimate's online (as much as I love the game offline) is just trash, in both average connection quality and overall infrastructure. Combine that with the pandemic prohibiting in person Ultimate tournaments, what happened this summer in the competitive Smash Ultimate scene, Slippi invigorating the Melee fanbase, and you have a lot more people getting into Melee, whether playing or watching.

But looking at this pragmatically.....
How on earth did the Big House organizers (knowing Nintendo's recent history with fan mods) think that running online Melee mods would somehow be cool with Nintendo in a tournament sponsored by Nintendo. Like what was the thought process here lmao

@Kyranosaurus

Slippi is definitely a mod, which NoA is correct about.

@nessisonett Why should it be celebrated that folks are enjoying an old game? That is a genuine question, because I don't understand that statement. Whether the people behind the mod are talented or even work at soup kitchens isn't the point of this.
Nintendo sponsors an event.
Nintendo says please don't use our stuff that way.
Event refuses.
Nintendo issues C&D

Whether someone is a genius philanthropist wouldn't change what happened here.

Unfortunate? Sure.

@Kyranosaurus Melee doesn't have online. Wanna play Smash online in a 'safe way'? Get Ultimate, or play something else. That's how this shakes out.

@ChameleonBros

This is what I'm trying to drill into people's head.

The Big House is moronic if they think Nintendo was gonna let that slide knowing they don't play around with stuff like that.

@Heavyarms55 I 100% respect what you are saying, I just think Capcom might not be the best example to call on. I don’t know what their stance is on piracy (I can probably guess) but there are literal hundreds of fan-made games of their IP that they don’t pursue, legally.

@JuiceMan_V Oh you meant that. I mean sure but it's got nothing to do with the game itself. It literally just let's people play it online. It technically isn't a "Smash mod" in that sense and again isn't illegal so Nintendo had no reason to cancel. It's basically like calling dinner off because the restaurant had to move your table to the one next to the window instead of the one near the entrance.

@HobbitGamer A book doesn't come with a bookmark so don't fold the pages. Honestly I can't understand why you wanna defend this decision so badly, it makes no sense.

@Kyranosaurus I don't have a dog in the race, because I don't play Melee. I just don't understand how Nintendo is wrong in this instance.

And everyone knows to use junk mail as a bookmark. It's nature's scrap paper

@Kyranosaurus
I agree wholeheartedly.
Truly fanboyism is a great scourge.

To be fair I expect for every one ilegal copy that the competitors were using for the purposes of the tournament they owned one legitimate copy anyway.

@HobbitGamer I don't play Melee either really. Just fed up with Nintendo swinging their legal team all over the place when they legit don't have the right. Sponsored event? Pull out as a sponsor then. There's still zero legal issues with how the event itself is being handled.

Also I don't think the book author would want you to use junk mail as a bookmark for their hard-earned work, that wouldn't be the intended way.

@Kyranosaurus

What do you mean "they don't legit have the right"?

They absolutely do.

That's their product being represented on the big stage.

@JuiceMan_V Bad sentence form. I was referring to the general way they use their legal team. Went off track and wasn't referring to this event in particular though of course I'm not any less mad at them for it.

Edit: Oh man now you're replying to comments meant for other people. You're making me lose track who I'm talking to lol

That’s ok. Melee is vastly inferior to Ultimate anyway.

Don't know why they are being so petty. It is not like they have being selling new copies of Smash Melee for almost two decades.

@Kyranosaurus

lol

I don't know why they are cancelling the competition for ultimate. Probably to make Nintendo more of a bad guy.

It's always the exact same thing in the comment: IP vs anarchists. I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong, just that the chat is a copy and paste every time Nintendo protects it's IP, which they are entitled to.

@Rhaoulos Nintendo told them to cancel the whole event - not just Melee. Nintendo are the one's making themselves "look more like the bad guy"

@Snivy102

You can get emotional all you want, bro.

It still didn't stop and won't stop Nintendo from doing what they do with their IP's.

Now stop hogging up all the data and get a job, my boi lol!

@HobbitGamer actual braindead

@JuiceMan_V smh some people dont understand

Wow, Nintendo is just the WORST when it comes to fan content. Like, seriously, its a near 20 year old game with no ports to other offical platforms, and it isn't making any money, and sure, its their IP, and they have the right to DMCA strike it, but why would they do this of it gives them no benefit?

I think both sides could have handled it better. Instead of cancelling the entire tournament, they could have just done an Ultimate tournament for the year. Than again, Nintendo could have offered a patched version of Melee for the organizers to use (which wouldn't be out of the question, considering Nintendo has done this in the past for the NES and SNES Classic editions and even this past week with the SMB Game and Watch). At the end of the day though, Nintendo owns the IP.

@nessisonett Honestly why should Nintendo do anything for the Melee crowd? Its a Gamecube game what is been and gone in Nintendo eyes, they care for Ultimate and Ultimate only and lets be honest Melee has never been Nintendo's favourite and the whole reason its so loved by its fanbase is because of an accident an accident Nintendo made sure to never repeat. Finally the Melee crowd is one of the most toxic entitled fanbases in gaming who bring nothing but shame to Smash as a whole, Nintendo are well aware of this and that's no doubt jaded their views on Melee. Yeah i'm being harsh but i can't stand the Melee fanbase and considering the scum that game has attracted it would just be better if Nintendo forgets it even exists. These people are doing something against Nintendo's rules, we all know what Nintendo are like so you're a dumb*ss if you think can so something like this and get away with it.

@WallyWest Melee only had issues with toxicity due to the sheer scale of the fan base, which is to be expected with literally everything ever. Plus Zero was on stage at a Nintendo official event for the later games and he’s a nonce so it’s not as if the problems aren’t there in the other Smash communities.

This C&D is so incredibly touchy, it's unreal. You cannot deny that, at a baseline, Nintendo has every right to C&D this event, but also at the same time you'd think that if they would do it for a tournament they would do it for Project Slippi itself, correct? Well, from my understanding of emulators and the law it seems that since Slippi is just a frontend and modification for Dolphin, Slippi itself is, in a way, protected by the law since there have been multiple court cases in the past involving emulators where the court sided with the emulator authors and not the console manufacturer (it's exactly the reason why Yuzu hasn't been shut down despite it being an emulator for a commercially relevant console).

What I'm trying to get at is that since Slippi development has a very low chance at being shutdown due to previous court precedent, The Big House Online being shuttered due to the usage of Slippi could very possibly have been something that Nintendo doesn't have the right to do. They're also basically saying that the C&D was sent to Juggleguy and the rest of the TOs due to the requirement of having to pirate a Melee ISO in order to enter, but as many people know, at least in the US, it isn't piracy if the copy that you're using was copied from your own physical copy of the game that you own, so how can Nintendo prove that every single entrant pirated Melee in order to use Slippi? The answer is of course they can't, but Nintendo has had a history of believing that all digital copies of their physical games are illegal, so this is them holding firm in that belief, whether it is right or wrong in the definition of the law they obviously don't care.

Another obvious inconsistency about all of this that you would know if you follow competitive Melee is that there is a Melee netplay tournament happening right now from today until Sunday, run by a production company called Beyond the Summit, called Smash Summit 10 Online. Again, if Nintendo would C&D Big House why the heck would they not C&D Summit? I think the answer lies in the fact that all Big House events held since Smash Wii U came out (that's the fifth Big House held in 2015) have been sponsored by / partnered with Nintendo, while Beyond the Summit has never directly been involved with Nintendo for an event (they did provide the stream for Big House 9 last year for example but did not organize the event). Nintendo probably feels that since Big House has represented Nintendo in the past that people would assume that Nintendo supports Slippi, which they obviously would never do. It is stupid that they're basically allowing one tournament to run while shutting another, but from my understanding that's probably why they went after Big House and not Summit.

whew that was a lot of typing for a game i personally don't like playing but love to spectate, i hope this all makes sense (tbf it is close to 2am where I'm from so my apologies if this doesn't lol)

@Crockin and I don't care for people who hate other people just because they like a particular video game a lot, just let people like what they like man

Welp if they’d complied when Nintendo asked them to this wouldn't have happened. Oh well.

@Kyranosaurus @Jakiboy @Snatcher "I never said it was ok"

So why attack those who say Nintendo is in the right? The Big House tried to run a tournament using pirated versions of Melee and tried to make money off it. That's a big no-no there.

Valid defense of Nintendo, or any person or organization for that matter, does exist after all.

@A_standard_idiot @DiscoDriver44 @Snivy102 Potential unwanted competition with Ultimate. If Nintendo allows Melee mods to run rampant, people could turn to that instead of the product they're selling. Makes sense if you ask me.

@TG16_IS_BAE Come up with an argument next time instead of pouring out salt.

They were using a pirated copy on an emulator...

Bruh.

@SeantheDon29 Not entirely true. There are illegal ways to run an emulator and mods. The Big House took pirated ISO copies of Melee, ran modded versions on an emulator, and tried to profit from it, going against Nintendo's policy. Nintendo warned them about this, The Big House refused to comply, and got a C&D as a result.

Where's the "fanboyism" in trying to protect your IP?

@Kyranosaurus if you're a Nintendo fan you should want to defend them too. Without us they could find other markets to tap in to. Without them, we wouldn't even have their games to be so upset over.

@Darlinfan "objectively hurts no one and takes nothing away from Nintendo"

This is not true. If Nintendo allowed Melee piracy and mods to run rampant, that could lure people away from Ultimate, the game Nintendo is selling and supporting at this time. You can't pretend that wouldn't hurt anyone.

@ReWane because that 20 year old game is still part of a long-standing franchise that has characters, likenesses, and other valuable properties attached to it that are a pivotal component of their business structure necessary to be a successful business. Furthermore it's associated with another product also of their possession that is currently in run. If attention were to go backwards to a previous product then what's the point of wasting countless hours of labor, sleep, effort and money to develop newer product? Do you guys really just want them to be like everyone else and just give you shovelware and be happy with that? Because eventually with all these complaints that's what it's gonna come down to. Instead of aiming for creativity and innovation they're gonna start saying "well the last one was good enough for them let's just give them another copy of the exact same thing but put a new look to it like EA does".

@ReshiramZekrom you make what could be a sound argument except what one judge rules doesn't necessarily validate or invalidate an interpretation of the law. (Some judges are jacka$$3s btw others just suck) The short of it is there have for a long time been laws against the unauthorized modification of a product and that's not going away anytime soon. That said the issue with emulators has more to do with the registration of the products involved. In this case videogame trademarks, copyrights, etc have I believe a 25 year term? I forget the numbers. You can lawfully emulate a digital product if it isn't under any currently active copyrights and I don't think the emulators ever are anyway so they are free game. The actual software being emulated however is where the slippery slope comes in. To put into marijuana terms, the police once told me that the product itself is illegal to have in possession or use. BUT once it's in my system they can't do anything about it because it's against the law to "have" the drugs. It's not against the law to be high. Once the product is gone there's no "possession" of a substance because circulating in my bloodstream isn't "possession". BUT were I to do something while I was high (under the influence) then they could do something. Similarly you can have an emulator and run Abadox from NES because that game (I believe) is no longer under any protected licensing. But if you're running something like Mike Tyson's (the original) Punch Out on the emulator now you have a problem because although the emulator isn't under any protected licensing, game being run on it still is. Imagine Nintendo trying to C&D you or even sue you for running Sonic and Knuckles on an emulator! 🤣 Can't happen because their property isn't what's being affected right?

@Darlinfan Why do people always say things like "hurts no one and takes nothing away from Nintendo" as if they understand profitability? Selling a game is only the most basic part of being profitable. You can sell a million and 1 of a product and still go bankrupt because it just wasn't enough ROI. What hurts and takes away from a company is the potential brand damage caused by people who don't have authorization to alter the product for public use. It's exactly like going to a used car lot and installing your own home built turbocharger on one of the cars in the lot. Like exactly the same concept here. Sure the turbocharger may be a lot of fun and get a lot more attention to an old vehicle and might be really awesome to someone. Or not. Might scare the living crap out my mom who "would have" bought the car but you're so in love with that turbocharger and that car you had to see it done. Or imagine a pizza you made for your dinner and someone adds sardines because they like them and are sure you will too! 🤣 That's what happens with things like this. People into modifying games for whatevwr satisfaction will love it. How many of them do you think it will take to turn a profit?

That's what hurts and takes away from a business.

Came for the comments, wasn't disappointed.

@Dog I never attacked them tho?????

@graysoncharles It may be cynical to say this, but I have a feeling that even if Nintendo released the actual iso of Melee with online features added, somehow it still wouldn’t be good enough to replace the exact original game running on original hardware in the eyes of Melee fanatics.

@JuiceMan_V you’re pretending like you have an understanding of the legality of the issue.
Too run Slippi you can use an entirely legal rom that you download from the disk you purchased and use to run melee on your computer.
It’s also not on you to prove that you legally purchased the game, it’s on Nintendo to prove that you illegally downloaded it. Stop licking the boots of major corporations

@Jojarett87 first of all you’re ignoring widely set legal precedent by just saying that some judges suck, which by the way isn’t a valid point. Secondly you’re ignoring the fact that it is completely legal to upload a rom from a disk onto your computer, then modifying that rom using something like slippi, and finally running that rom on an emulator.

As I said in another comment it is entirely on Nintendo to prove that you illegally downloaded the rom. It’s not on you to prove that you bought the rom

Yeah! What about Scarecrow's brain???

It would be useful to have a bit more detail in the reporting so we can properly understand the decision.

Nintendo allege the organisers wouldn't co-operate. What does that mean exactly? That Nintendo said stop, they didnt stop, so a cease and desist was issued? Or does it mean an alternative approach would have been acceptable to Nintendo if the organisers communciated with them properly?

The wording of Nintendo's statement suggests an alternative solution could have been found... or is that just Nintendo's PR team choosing their wording tactically?!

It absolutely does not require illegally downloaded roms of melee. Wii and GameCube are so easy to make backups of.

Or maybe, perhaps, the Smash community could simply, y'know, adapt and play Ultimate instead. That's, uh, an option.

@ReshiramZekrom I think they can take a harmless joke from a random stranger on the internet

@Dog It’s a forum, not debate class.

@RamsayBolton

Be original with the "corporate bootlicker" claims.

I never specified if Nintendo's claims about illegal copies were true or not, however, I did side with Nintendo on the Slippi mod claim, which it is.

I also emphasized that it was a dumb business decision by The Big House folks to try and play Melee online with that same mod while being sponsored by Nintendo like it was okay.

Maybe you should learn to read properly before you jump out there and say stupid things.

Regardless of any of these specifics of this case I'm just so sick of hearing about Melee like it came out 19 years ago.
It was fun but flawed.
I dont care that a company isnt supporting a game they sold about 8 million copies of 3 consoles ago enough in the opinions of its hardcore diehard fans of that game.
Not the only smash game ever was and like to me
Sequels are better, like you might argue brawl was not so much in some aspects but others were.
Dont hear people going every Mario kart isnt Doubledash etc and Nintendo isnt supporting kirby air riders scene enough.
Like seems melee fans want Smash to be all melee all the time, Nintendo doesnt really and vast majority of gamers really dont care.

@Snatcher Awww, is the big scary man stopping you from breaking the law?

Why are people arguing about this
Piracy and hacking are illegal. End of.

Unfortunate, but understandable. From Nintendo's perspective, people should just play Ultimate, and allowing this type of modding in a large public tournament has the potential to devalue their property.

The event called for Melee. Melee doesn’t have online. They did what they could do the game could be playable online. Nintendo stepped in and said no. If the Big House is sponsored by Nintendo why wouldn’t Nintendo be ok with this? With the social distancing guidelines what alternative was there for this event to go forward as planned?!

Let's all be honest here, this is not about Nintendo standing up for their copyright or being upset that modded copies of Melee are being played through an emulator.

To them, Melee is a cancer that won't go away. Nintendo wants all Smash Players to play the newest and shinest Smash Bros game which is Ultimate.

To them, there is no valid reason for anyone to be playing Melee in 2020 given Ultimate has all the fighters from 64-to Smash4 and its mechanics even move back towards Melee's to some degree.

Nintendo has made no secret as to their hatred of Melee and its scene since it often takes attention away from their newest game. Hell, I'm sure other fighting game publishers hate Melee since it means they often get pushed out of events like Evo since Smash has to run both its newest game and Melee.

So, the Melee community for its size is likely hated by Nintendo, other fighting game communities, and other fighting game publishers who hate that a nearly 20-year-old game is still hogging the spotlight all these years later at major events.

Covid-19 has given Nintendo a chance to destroy what they see as cancer once and for all while pushing Ultimate as the only game Smash players should be playing on a tournament level.

My guess is thatThe Big House fought hard for the Melee fans who wanted to play in a tournament but can't get to a live event due to covid, Nintendo got angry since they figured only Ultimate, and maybe Wii U and 3DS were the only games that would be played at the event since they are the only ones with active online features(and also the only three Smash games that Nintendo is still officially selling) and Big House's stubborn refusal to back down from having Melee at the event enraged Nintendo who pulled the plug and used their legal rights to shut the whole thing down.

Nintendo does not like the fact that Melee is still being played and even still overshadows the current games in the franchise.

This battle finally gave them a legal right to shut Melee down and tell other Smash Tournaments to either follow their orders or face the same fate.

Which is that Ultimate and maybe Wii U and 3DS are fine, but Melee is not allowed since it breaks Nintendo's rights as a publisher since it's being played on an emulator and modded.

This is more than Nintendo just being a about copyright. They are finally trying to weaken and destroy the Melee scene as much as they can before live events can happen again. Depending on how long Covid shuts down live events, Nintendo might get their wish with a weakened Melee community trying to rebuild after a year or maybe two with no live events.

@Caryslan
The feel of the games is radically different. Melee and Ultimate while in the same series don’t play the same. Your argument is kinda nonsense. SSF2T is still being played at tournaments along with SF5. Nintendo doesn’t want us to forget about Super Mario Bros after all we have the shinier Odyssey so why bother doing a Game and Watch with the original when they could’ve loaded Odyssey!

@Darlinfan no, I'm saying it goes "beyond" us gamers already playing. Videogaming is still a multi-billion dollar industry that's much larger than the already established communities currently involved. It goes far beyond the Smash community that prefers one version over the other. It also includes people who have never played Smash at all, people who haven't even played Nintendo at all, and even people who haven't even played videogames at all. And to ensure that your product is appealing to them AND your current players at the same time you want to keep your product in its raw form and any connections to that product as standard as possible because you have zero idea what cool ideas might bring in "more" people or possibly turn them away.

@Caryslan Melee fans are a very sizeable group. But if that group was enough to sustain Nintendo's profitability, they wouldn't have to ever make new games.

The problem is ROI. Without that bottom line they cannot continue to stay in business. Imagine putting out a product and you have millions of ppl worldwide still playing it. That's it. No sequel, no spinoff, nothing you just stop right there because the next installment is cool but everyone wants to stick with the previous one. Do you honestly think you could stay in business without a profit coming in? Theoretically you could just DLC the game to death but that would be a huge problem too.

How dare this happen I wanted to see this..

@RamsayBolton woooaaaah hold on friend. Ignoring a widely set legal precedent how? Judges interpret the law differently. Always have and always will. More so different states/jurisdictions etc have slightly different laws and also have slight differences from federal laws which I'm positive you already know. I say (some) judges suck because some do. Some have been notorious for ruling in favor of some complete bs and be the same judge to rule against the same thing a month later! Lol Maybe it's because they missed something last time. Mistakes happen. But that's neither ignoring a legal precedent, not invalid, not even an argument it's just a general statement that's true and serves the point that again just because one sides in favor of something doesn't mean it's correct.

2nd check it out. The reason that things like receipts or bills of sale exist is because it is exactly on the purchaser to prove legal purchase of a product! Lol it's not a civil case in which the burden of proof is on the plaintiff. If you have a product that was legally downloaded that's fine. But no law permits you to modify it regardless of your legal ownership then distribute it. I specifically said you can lawfully "emulate" it. But literally FCC regulations actually clarify plain as day that it's not lawful to "modify" it and redistribute it. And DMCA goes into further detail clarifying specifically that you cannot "circumvent" copyright protected software. Smash Bros is still copyright protected isn't it?
🤔 Anything you do in the privacy of your own home is on you. (within reason) but when it's being made available for "public" use that's when you're running into a wall. Nintendo at that point DOES have the proof because you're literally putting the proof in their faces right? 🤣 C'mon buddy!

@Darlinfan those hypotheticals are one of the largest factors of business!! You have to "predict" how your product will sell, the type of reception it will receive, you read sales data on what areas generate the most revenue it all part of determining your potential profitability. Because you can't possibly know who is seeing what and when, you don't risk your brand being seen in negative reception by a crowd you don't even know exists. That tournament in "reality"? You think the ONLY people in the world that know about it are the most tightly connected group of what 50 local smash players??? Lol you don't know who has access to that tournament and you don't know if the people that organized it will do it again and make it more accessible to more people. You also dont know what their future plans are with their "modified" product or if someone from that tournament would want their own access to it too. Those hypotheticals are the things that make or break a business and you have people looking at every possibility they can think of to mitigate the chances of potential losses. Nobody is perfect so nobody is going to catch everything which is why a lot of mods and sort go under the radar. But this right here was plain in their faces and specifically not lawful under actually specifically defined regulations. What was Nintendo supposed to do? Carve that crew of people out of their interest leaving them alone and completely change their sales direction to someone else? All that does is encourage more of it and force them to compete with their customers against their own product. What intelligent person willingly competes against self?!

@Caryslan They had to cancel their Ultimate plans too because it uses same mod since Nintendo are too petty and cheap to fix their awful online configuration even during a raging pandemic. The lag makes it near impossible to have remotely fair matches.

Which is odd because there have been other tournaments that use the same modified version of the games and they haven't been sent anything.

Maybe they want to distract people from the growing stacks of joy con lawsuits, or maybe they want people not to realize they could fix the online or support an online for Melee, and just choose not to because they're cheap and don't want people to have fun in ways they don't think is how the game should be enjoyed.

@Darlinfan if it's too much to read then you aren't interested in what's actually reality! Lol sorry fella

Short end of it: there's a reason they are a successful business and we aren't. They know how it works on the inside

People acting like this random tournament playing this 20 year old game that Nintendo has not rereleased at all online was somehow going to negatively impact Nintendo at all? Lol. This is just pure pettiness on Nintendo's part plain and simple.

All these whiners here...get this through your freaking skul:

NINTENDO, LIKE EVERY OTHER COMPANY, WILL AND MUST PROTECT THEIR IPs.

What goddamn part of "using a pirated version in an emulator" you babies didn't get?

Jesus!

@DiscoDriver44 How wouldn't it?

I can name 5 ways it would. All I ask is that you name 1. You first.

@Darlinfan The thing is if I write to you as a fellow gamer you'll only see it from the same perspective. That's not the problem that needs addressing. The business aspect is what needs addressing. So if I tell you from a gamer perspective it would only be in agreement with you because I don't disagree with with we do as gamers. But how can I explain the problem Nintendo has from a perspective that I'm on board with? Make sense?

Gamers not understanding business but wanting to talk like they know what will or won't effect someone's business then telling someone to speak to them from a non-business perspective is pretty ironic.

@Darlinfan But it is a detriment. And you sticking to your opinion doesn't mean that it isn't a detriment. We all have the right to what we believe, but if it's not how things work then it just isn't. No personal viewpoint in the world no matter how much you stick to it will ever define SOPs.

Now, don't change your mind. That's your thing and I won't nor can't take that away. But if I can't change "your" mind how can you critique "their" minds on their own SOPs?

A huge misunderstanding and overreaction on Nintendo's part

@LilMuku Its not a law whatsoever check your fact's, (I'm done commenting I feel like I'm being attacked for bs so whatever)

@KingMike wrong. It's US Laws that all video games has a copyright protection for 100 years. It's not just a "this is a Nintendo definition" ideology.

Holy smokes the takes on this comment section. I had to make an account. The amount of people in this forum allowing laws to dictate their moral compass is insane. It's not even a black and white precedent - there's a definite grey area in all of this. See Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. vs Nintendo of America, Inc. (1991). Read the outcome below:

"manufacturer of product that allowed users to alter codes transmitted between video gaming console and game cartridge did not infringe console manufacturer’s exclusive right, under federal copyright law, to create derivative works"

I'm well aware of the importance of preserving IP as I'm a developer for cyber liability quoting software for brokerages and wholesalers in an emerging industry. Nintendo did not issue this C&D to preserve IP. They did for two reasons:

1.) Nintendo wants the Melee community to switch to Ultimate for monetary purposes. There is no money to be made from the Melee scene in their eyes - this is true. It's an old game on an old platform.

2.) Nintendo would be embarrassed that Ultimate online play would shown to a large audience as significantly inferior to the Melee version, developed by fans simply for the love of the game rather than Nintendo's own salaried employees.

Yes, the organizers at Big House could have most definitely handled it better, as Nintendo was a sponsor. Yes, I also understand the moral ambiguity of SHARING/DISTRIBUTING an ISO. It just is crazy to me the amount of gamers on here bootlicking a wealthy corporation because "don't tread on their intellectual property." The game is 19 years old. Do you care about Nintendo's bottom line that much? The C&D was issued because Nintendo wants to preserve their pride and keep their pockets lined. That's it.

Criticizing Nintendo’s decision to take down the big house is perfectly fine. But if you chose to insult Nintendo and its fans for it, you’re an *****. The twitter posts I’ve seen regarding the issue are disgusting. Saying that Nintendo is a horrible company and bullying me over simply liking Nintendo and their games. To everyone who engaged in these tactics, you are nothing but a pathetic loser and you are worse than what you criticized Nintendo for.

@JuiceMan_V you’re incorrect about the slippi mod claim. It is 100% legal to download a rom onto your computer, alter that rom using something like Slippi, and then run that altered rom using an emulator as seen by previous legal precedent.

I don't get why Nintendo don't just release Smash Bros melee on Switch, with rollback netcode. I guarantee they'd turn a profit, and they'd eliminate all the negative PR. They could even outsource it to another developer, like what SNK has done with Code Mystics.

@J0ester The only thing that makes it different than "format shifting" music for personal use (ruled legal since the late '90s) is that nobody has explicitly taken video games to a judge. I don't see any reason it wouldn't be ruled the same principle.

Still, there is the personal backup rule as well. You bought a game, you have a right to be able to play it, not on the condition that the original media as well as the proprietary device able to utilize it are in working condition.

To anyone saying, "just play Ultimate"... Melee is a completely different game. Both Melee and Ultimate are very popular to this day.

#FreeMelee

Good to see people taking a stand. The fans make these communities and they should be able to voice their opinions.

I didnt know nintendo sold the smash IP to some smash fans, bunch of babies.

Dont like a business practice? Dont support the company.

But yh its in nintendo's right, they are still the ip holder of smash, all of em.

They decided they didnt want code altered in melee so they could play online, which is fair.

#KillMelee both side is wrong and they hurting franchise

Here’s an idea. Play a different video game and move on.

Nintendo is staffed with idiots. News at 11.

It's nice to see the continued support, especially after the new revelations of what Nintendo has done to the scene in the past. At the very least, I hope Nintendo leave everyone alone and stop making an issue out of people having fun.

I miss Melee's speed and response options, but not the exploits, lack of roster balance, and how much it's aged. Independent of all of the online connectivity method and IP protection considerations,
Let Melee go.

https://twitter.com/anonymoussmash2/status/1331031597647355905

This was the original tweet that sparked #SaveSmash, might want to include this in the article if anyone sees this. It explains how it's not just a Melee thing, and how Nintendo actively tried to stop events for all Smash games in general for years. It's anonymous but many people who have been heavily involved with this stuff have said it's accurate.

@KingBowser86 I mean ideally Nintendo should let it go so the people who love it for what it is can continue to. Nintendo make no money off it, but the Melee scene is better than ever. I've found it a really welcoming environment and the fact that even now more and more characters are seen as viable is exciting.

#SaveSmash from what, exactly? The games are alive, accessible and perfectly playable - both now and afterwards. For all their resonance statistic testimonies, all these "communities" don't even seem to realize that their existence is entirely separate from and entirely dispensable for that of an interactive fiction franchise. I'd understand some of the buzz if it were a discontinued MMO supported entirely by community servers - but a fighting game series with full-fledged single player and local multiplayer? Fans, please. 🙄

I feel for the cancelled tournament, but less pleasant stuff has happened in the legal relations area - between licensed IPs and events by people who don't own them, it'll always be a gamble. But positioning the matter as something Nintendo should allegedly be ashamed of messing with is just perverse. They may well have ONE reason for "missing all the opportunities with Smash" - lack of interest in following these opportunities. And for every Fiction creator and producer out there, that alone can and should be reason enough.

Alot of idiots abound regardless of TOS/EULA and the contract that The Big House has with Nintendo. What they are trying to do is circumvent their own TOS with Nintendo. Why else would you think you get such Cease/Decease from Nintendo. What I see is they are trying to have not to pay Nintendo to host such events and got caught with their pants down. If you do such events without permission or approval from the IP(remember Nintendo still owns this product regardless of what you want to say) is how you get into HOT Water and there is no one but yourself to blame for it.

Videogame software should become public domain after about 20 years, not the IP itself but the actual games should be. That way certain things would be protected like modifying a game. This is also something that needs to happen so we can get past all of this grey area with ROMS. Games are art at the end of the day whether some recognize it that way are not, games are in fact by definition art.

I bet (or rather, hope) this’ll blow over and be forgotten in a few months.

while i understand Nintendo's position, i also think it is a shame that Nintendo won't allow this to go ahead given the circumstances, an ideal (but highly unlikely) solution would be Nintendo providing some form of official way for melee to be played online for tournaments

@The-Nate I feel like it will, I love Melee but tournaments are just gonna have to accept they'll never get any help from Nintendo the way Capcom or NRS do.

I always find this argument quite conflicting in my mind. On the one hand I see Nintendos response as a logical recourse for a company protecting their IP and brand to some extent due to prior issues in the Smash community.

On the other hand, I don't get why Nintendo wouldn't see past the legal side of things and support this kind of thing, it will only bring positive feedback from fans of Nintendo. Better still, just re release the game and use the fans net code as part of it, pay them for it and then make a load of money on the sales.

"Nintendo is attempting to kill the very same community I grew up in." Seriously? Because it chose not to publicly endorse and allow playing a copied and unofficially modified build of one of their main franchises? Kids these days seriously need to get a clue, and a little bit more perspective.

@Juga You know there's a USB port under the panel where you plug in the HDMI, right? Shouldn't have any trouble connecting both your Gamecube adapter and LAN adapter, unless the LAN adapter uses more than one USB port.

The saddest thing to me is that people are so distressed by this. It's one year. Many of us aren't having Thanksgiving or have lost friends or relatives this year. Having to skip a Smash tournament for one year is not the end of the world.

And "Nintendo is attempting to kill the very same community I grew up in."??? Sheesh.

@PBandSmelly Nintendo allow Melee tournaments. They just don't allow modded Melee tournaments. It's funny people pretend Nintendo is the worst company ever by doing this when any other company outlaw tournaments of older episode game when the new one gets released. Like how Capcom outlawed Street Fighter 4 when the worse Street Fighter 5 was released and there was no outrage because Big Brother Sony was behind this and it's not allowed to criticize Sony.

@Yellow Assuming base Melee as has been played for many years, not something modded. Modding in roster balance is nice but Melee still requires a good bit of elbow grease.

@KingBowser86 Actually there's been no balance mods at all, people are just starting to see use in the likes of DK and Mewtwo just thanks to them being developed more.

While they are both sides to this argument, I think Nintendo is partly to blame to prevent the Smash brand itself evolve to a more profitable entertainment business.

Many brands wanted to make the game more interesting, but due to continuous Nintendo sabotage, nothing was ever materialized. Nintendo just leeches off the community without letting it evolve further, keeping it with false hope that something will happen, but nothing does in the end.

I also expect people here to not care at all about this, but in the end people are just trying to have more fun with their favorite game, so I don't see why is that an issue.

And BTW, the mod doesn't come in a patch or pre-distributed ISO, it's a custom emulator that adds those features.

If Nintendo would offer a solution or work around to allow the tournament to function in some capacity, I would have more respect for their stance on this.

@Jokerwolf This is a horrible idea. Why should video games be held to a different standard than movies, TV Shows, Books, and other forms of media?

Copyright law exists for a reason, and yeah, I get that its a pain in the ass when things like this happen with Melee.

But companies like Sega, Nintendo, SNK, Capcom, all resell old games on modern systems. Many of which are over 20 years old!

Yeah, Nintendo is being a here. I agree 100%. But it's their copyright, and a game should not fall into the public domain after 20 years. Hell, it should never fall into the public domain unless the copyholder has refused to do anything with the game in that time, namely due to them going bankrupt.

But just like older movies, books, and TV Shows find new life on newer streaming platforms, so do games as well.

Making say, Sonic the Hedgehog public domain will do nothing but hurt Sega since most people won't have a reason to buy an offical copy.

This is just a bad idea. I don't agree with Nintendo on this, and I feel they should allow Melee(a game they are no longer selling) to be played online.

But taking a huge piss all over copyright law does not help matters either.

I kinda hate that argument that this is "free advertisement." But do you think Nintendo needs it right now? The Switch is selling extremely well regardless of expending this community. They don't need you until they need you. I'm talking about the Wii U era. The time where they "became friendly." Why because they needed you to buy the switch. Just because brand is family friendly does not mean they are your friend. Disney anyone?

Nintendo would probably rather distance themselves from the Smash competitive scene after all the revelations this year than get further involved, which is what #SaveSmash is about. And I wouldn't blame them for it even if they could definitely help in making the Smash scene greater and safer.

This makes 100% sense to me. I think Nintendo's issue had to do with the fact that these were being played with iSOs (which Nintendo obviously does not support) and a modified version of the game to do this tournament online. Which obviously Nintendo will not support and they reached out to the organizers to find a solution that works for both parties and the organizers refused yet still moved forward with the tournament. What was Nintendo's legal recourse to do, but to send a cease and disist.

I'm sure we are not getting the full story, but the Big House is obviously misrepresenting Nintendo's actions to garner sympathy when they are equal parts at play for there being no Smash representation at all at their tournament. And they could have just cancelled the Melee event and just done Ultimate (which due to COVID most people would have found reasonable due to official copies of Melee not having online functionality). Now due to them antagonizing Nintendo, they can do neither. That and this also harms future partnerships with Nintendo when things get back to normal in 2021.

@Burning_Spear I've been lucky to have not been too much directly impacted, but I'll be honest my finances are tight and it will be first year in over a decade I won't see my brother and his partner for the holidays. This will be the first year in a decade, in general, we have not seen each other in person. Not having a Smash tournament for one year is not the end of the world when we consider everything else going on in 2020. Hell, it's been a borderline miracle that even pro-sports have even been able to play at all this year with minor issues! Even then we should be thankful that thanks to the tireless work of doctors, scientists and government officials that we are nearing the end of this pandemic with vaccinations just around the corner and things are looking like getting back to normal in 2021 is not impossible. We might be back to normal as early as March.

@KingBowser86 exactly! It's a game of the past- I like it for the nostalgia but much prefer my ultimate.

I say, just let Melee finally rest in piece!
#F**kMelee

I know this is a longshot and I don't want to get anyone's hopes up, but Nintendo does keep projects close to their chest.

But here's a crazy thought.

Maybe Nintendo is doing this because they have either a remake or a remaster of Melee in the works with online play included.

This has happened before. Years ago, Nintendo canned a fan-made Metroid II remake and people got pissed off at them. As it turns out, Nintendo themselves were working on a Metroid II remake on the 3DS.

So, while this might seem like a long-shot, maybe Nintendo is trying to do an official remaster of Melee for the Switch with online play.

They have seen how much of a player base this game attracts, and they love to do remakes and remasters of their older games.

To them, a Melee remaster would make them a good amount of money since they will pretty much force the community to buy new hardware to play it.

Maybe this could explain their sudden stance against Slippi and Melee ISOs. They don't want it to gain traction since they have a project in the works.

Want to play Smash online? Play Ultimate. Grow the f*ck up.

God the Melee fanbase really are pathetic especially if they think Nintendo gives two sh*ts about them or Melee. Nintendo only care for one Smash game and that's Ultimate, i actually wish all copies of Melee would just die just to annoy its toxic and creepy fanbase.

I understand that Nintendo needs to defend their IP, but I don’t understand why they haven’t released Melee on Wii U / Switch. Wind Waker and Sunshine have already been released.

Because I follow Nintendo as a general term, these tweets with these hashtags keep popping up on my timeline. And they become more unhinged, more dramatic by the minute 😂😂. These folks need to gain some f'n perspective and grow up. It's fine to be passionate about your hobby. It's insane to think the sky is falling just because a company is choosing to decide how it's product is used.

Maybe this will convince Nintendo to release Melee HD on Switch (probably the same odds as Sakurai relenting and letting Waluigi in Ultimate).

@Sinton I think it has to do with Sakurai not overly liking Melee. To him, it is a flawed game with a large number of bugs and did not include all the features he wanted to. I think Nintendo would really have no issues re-releasing Melee, but Sakurai is probably the one not wanting to do it because to him he got to make his "Ultimate" Smash game in Smash Ulitmate and he wants to support that.

That and let's be honest Melee fans will be upset either way. If they just released Melee with online they'd be upset because the game is not rebalanced or graphically upgraded. If they rebalance the game and upgrade the graphics then it will be "just Ulitmate with Melee's roster and stages" and removed the "features" (aka bugs) that allow for advance play. Nintendo and Sakurai are in a lose-lose from a PR perspective no matter what they do. And based on Majora's Mask 3D, I bet Sakurai would want to do the same thing that Aonuma did which was "fix" the game and upset long time fans.

Oh Lord now legal actions are happening.

@BlubberWhale Nintendo did offer a solution or work around to allow the tournament to function in some capacity, but unfortunately Big House decided to refuse it and chose to undermine Nintendo's authority instead despite Nintendo having told them nicely to not use a modded Melee on their tournament, Big House should have obliged to Nintendo's request and simply just only host Smash Ultimate instead and this would have all been easily avoided.

@Chibi_Manny I agree. Would it have been that much of an issue to not host Melee this one year and do one in 2021 when things settled? Probably not as I doubt people who've played this game for almost two decades would stop because there being no tournaments for one year.

@Kyranosaurus
Really, Nintendo didn't need to stop people hacking their games and distributing for their own profit. Nah why would they do that!

joking aside, its not good. Nintendo is definitely within their right to protect their IP, and they won't lose much if any business from the backlash. I also recognize that the people involved probably knew the risks given Nintendo's very strict adherence to IP protection, but come on. Do they REALLY need to go through with this?

If people are finding new ways to enjoy your products, why not embrace it and move on? Immensely petty. Why not come up with some proprietary melee mod specifically for tournaments and sell that? Gate it so that only tournament players can use it. Work with the community on a solution that doesn't suck and these things would not be such an issue

@dew12333 Literally not what's being talked about but I understand you were getting bored so fair enough.

@Caryslan Doesn't matter, people are going to take the ***** they want and there is nothing anyone can do, at least this ends the conversation and "morals" argument and actually helps preserve old software that would otherwise be lost to time. Right now there is nothing protecting older software other than a company being "benevolent" and re-releasing old games that many of us already own.

@KingMike It uses a modified version of the game. The original doesn't have any online functionality, which is why Nintendo isn't ok with this (or at least that was the excuse).

I think people are overreacting to this whole situation.

To sorta recap; the Big House was given a Cease and Desist not on simply hosting a Super Smash Bros. Anything Tournament, but rather they were using Emulated versions of Super Smash Bros, Melee with the SLIPPI mod and chose to do so against Nintendo’s Wishes. Nintendo has standards, and The Big House refused those standards, the community has to suffer because if it, THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.

If they simply decided to do Ultimate Only, then we wouldn’t be dealing with this. In terms of my stance on Melee and Ultimate, “Melee is Overrated.” and Ultimate is a better Melee in terms of greater match variety, overall support, at least there’s an effort to balance the game’s roster, and has online (depending on your connection set up that is)

@Minfinity the tournament could have gone on if they listened to Nintendo and stuck to Ultimate. They "stuck to their guns" so Nintendo shut them down. The reason they can do that has nothing to do with emulation or piracy, it's right of performance: in the cases of film, music, or video games, the IP holder can stop public use of their art. So if you are a musician, you can stop a politician you find distasteful from playing your song at a rally, or in this case, Nintendo can stop a public event or venue from using their IP, including Ultimate, for commercial purposes, for any reason they feel like.

I think it's just fine what Nintendo are doing here. Their terms of service specifically state that you can't record and upload or stream footage of Nintendo 1st party games that have been hacked or pirated. It's been that way for a long time now, and the internet being what it is, it's incredibly easy to just google things like that to find out. So I have no sympathy for a group that wants to make money off of Nintendo's work when they aren't willing to follow their rules.

@leathco Nintendo apparently offered to let them do an Ultimate tournament and were rebuffed, but once the C&D hammer comes out there is no nuance.

@SwitchForce you don’t have to pay Nintendo to host a smash event.

It was the only option.

@TG16_IS_BAE Didn't Nintendo supported melee tournaments sponsoring Big House for years even after Smash Wii, Wii U and Ultimate?
Nintendo just didn't agree with the use of suspicious copies of melee.

@A_standard_idiot Fan content? The Big House is a for profit business charging money for entrance to the tournament.

I think it's wrong to blurr the lines between business and fandom. When you're making money off it directly or indirectly, you're no longer just a fan doing something, you're a business trying to make money. So if in this case it involves modifications to Nintendo's games without approval, then The Big House is in the wrong.

RIP smash melee

@Wexter
I agree with what you said. Nintendo doesn't see melee as a franchise. The franchise is Smash Bros, melee was just one game of that franchise.

@TG16_IS_BAE Never saw a well known tournament sponsored by Capcom using a suspicious or modded copy of Capcom's games.

@Jakiboy fan entitlement is also a scourge

Use of a 3 party software can break the terms of usage. This seems bad for the players but seriously, other companies would had done the same.

@JuiceMan_V I feel the same way. I think Nintendo is being over the top, but the fact that Big House is using a modified version of melee is the only reason i feel slightly different. With a fan-game; it has no endorsement or money coming in from nintendo. So that makes me more pissed when its removed because its purely a labor of love. The equivalent of this would be if you did a concert of a song that a bandmate wrote but modified it enough to annoy the writer. Both are pretty stupid to be honest. Nintendo for being over the top and Big House for using Nintendos money but using a fan-made mod for the base.

@Chibi_Manny Telling them not to play it, isn’t a solution.

@Chibi_Manny Wow, what a selfish, ignorant thing to say.

@BlubberWhale What was ignorant about his statement? Nintendo offered a solution for this unique situation (Smash tournaments during COVID) and Big House refused. This was a Nintendo endorsed event and they should had honoured Nintendo's request. I don't see SNK, Capcom or any other fighting game publisher doing anything different. That and is it really the "death of Smash" if we don't have a Melee tournament for this one year?

@Donkey-Kong-Fan why even use twitter to begin with?

On topic: Clearly the better option is to play Ultimate, I fail to see why they refuse to leave melee behind, even after Brawl I simply couldn't play melee anymore, feels just way off.

So how exactly are they supposed to obtain legal ISO copies of the game to use? Rip it themselves? Doesn't the ToS or EULA specifically mention that backups are for archival purposes only? We laugh at that because the situation was always in the privacy and comfort of one's own home, where Nintendo cannot logically enforce that rule. This being a public scenario, however, Nintendo can.

The morale high grounders on here are the worst people.

Nintendo defenders. Legal eagles and absolute bores.

Ugh.

I understand that people still love Melee but ...
I really don´t understand why insisting in public online competitions with such dated game when there is at least two better options that support online without (huge) issues.
I see what Nintendo is doing. Frankly, no one is "right" here.

@Wexter I’m with you on the fact that it won’t totally kill Melee, and definitely not “Smash.” Maybe “ignorant” was a little mean (though less-so is than the “eff your favorite game, I hope your community dies” sentiment going around), but I just meant he’s ignoring that people love Melee and they can’t just ditch it for Ultimate and expect the same experience they love about Melee...

(So talking mostly about his eff Melee comment.)

Listen, Nintendo does some crappy stuff and pisses people off at times, I wont deny that, but some of these people are overreacting way too hard. I saw a post online of someone getting a #freemelee tattoo, like, that's absolutely ridiculous.

@BlubberWhale No, but they can't have Melee online without getting a C&D from Nintendo. That's just how it is, Nintendo has the right to do it, and will always exercise that right. Like, every time.

@Parmandur Fair enough. I agree that’s just how it is. I still think Nintendo could be a little more creative here though. Maybe a temporary license fee for entrants, I don’t know.

@Yorumi the only "should" Nintendo cares about is maximizing shareholder value. Which will involve violent defense of their IP. It's like getting angry at the rain or earthquakes.

@BlubberWhale it sounds like they told the tournament what was acceptable and asked them to comply, and were rebuffed. That was about as much creativity as one can ask from a corporation, frankly.

@Xiovanni Bingo. The justification doesn't need to be defended in court, Nintendo can pull the plug on a commercial venue for anything that makes them uncomfortable.

@BlubberWhale But official copies of Melee don't have an Online Feature. Back when these games first came out online modes were not really something most console developers thought about. Don't forget Halo Combat Evolved (which came out in 2001 in the same month as Melee) did not have it built-in. And people argue that Halo started the online multiplayer craze that drove the 7th Console Generation (that was Halo 2 which came out in 2004). This should tell you how fringe online gaming was for consoles even back then.

But, we live in a COVID world right now which means retro game tournaments are kinda on hold. Sure some ports of old arcade games have online multiplayer and can work... But, this event was endorsed by Nintendo so if it does not come built into the box then it's kinda a no-game-o moment. They could have just put Melee on hold for the year to not anger their sponsor (you know Nintendo) for the event. But, they openly defied Nintendo's wishes so Nintendo pulled the plug on the event.

Can Nintendo make an online port of Melee? Sure, they can. But, is it really worth it for them? And even then would Sakurai want to do it? And is it feasible to demand one during a year where developers are already under more pressure than usual? These are the questions of why it has not happened yet. And considering Smash Ultimate has outsold Melee by a factor of four to one, it really does not make them in a rush to do so when even the director sees Ultimate as the superior game.

@Yorumi Let me answer it for them... it won't. It won't stop people from buying Smash Ultimate, it won't stop people from buying a Switch (which has now outsold the Xbone), and it won't stop people from buying Nintendo games. Gamers like to say they'll do something, but have close to no follow through.

@Yorumi I think this was a unique scenario where Nintendo wanted to make it work and it was more the organizers who dropped the ball here. Nintendo has never endorsed unofficial mods and if they let it slide here where they are a sponsor it would hurt them in other areas of business. I've always been in the camp that people are creative animals and if they want to create fangames then go create something new if the publisher says you can't use their IP! And in cases, like these where the publisher is helping to foot the bill they probably are allowed a final say in how they want their game represented. Which the organizers should have respected as their stunt to try to put pressure on Nintendo is probably going to backfire on them considering COVID is still a thing and I think the average person will side with Nintendo on this one.

I think the Wii U could have been successful, but it was a marketing disaster. The fact that most Wii U games ported to Switch proves that is the case that the games were AWESOME and people will buy them, but the Wii U just could not market itself to do it. But, I don't think Nintendo really has to worry about the Switch brand right now as if they announced a Switch 2 in a year's time most people would be on board to go get one. It fits snuggly into a five-year life-cycle and with how fast mobile processors have advanced they don't need to worry about the power gap anymore as diminishing returns are happening with enthusiast-level GPUs and CPUs.

And the hashtag has finally evolved. This is a good thing, as this issue being framed under the lens of Melee vs. Ultimate served no one.

@Yorumi I have no burden of proof to show anything: Nintendo clearly feels it hurts their IP, and that is all that matters in terms of Nintendo's actions. If Nintendo comes to you and says "do not do A, we feel that harms our IP, please do B instead," choosing to proceed with A will result in action. It's as simple as that.

@Yorumi Nintendo started to shut down Smash Tournaments during the WiiU/3DS generation.

If it was that simple and the only result of shutting down tournaments is a reduction in sales, then why would Smash Ultimate sell more than both versions of Smash 4 combined before the Switch reached the 3DS' sales figures?

@Yorumi The 3DS family sold 75.94 million units, the GBA family sold 81.51 million. The 3DS will be the worst selling Nintendo portable platform by the end of this fiscal year.

The problem the Wii U and 3DS faced was the existence of iPhones and Android devices, which the Switch has been able to compete with due to the hybrid setup.

@Edu23XWiiU First of all Ultimate’s online is trash and Melee has a more competitive environment with different mechanics.
How would you like it if your job had a workaround so you could do it at home, but the company decided to ban it and make you go there in person during a pandemic.
So how about you grow the hell up.

@crashcontrol Easy answer. Quit your job and find another one. The thing is much like pro-sports being an eSports player is a privilege and not a right. If let's say the NBA, NHL or NFL decided that it would be too risky to hold games in person then players can't just go "but we can play it online! We'll play our games on Madden 2021 instead! Pay me!"

If an event cannot be held because the company that holds the rights to the game decides they will not support a 3rd party application then you cannot demand them to accept it. To quote you on this one "So how about you grow the HFIL up." As that is an extremely childish demand and since we established that you cannot do in person games safely then they're kinda SOL.

@Wexter yes but it does not change the fact that Nintendo does have the right to do it, but it does not mean it’s right to do it.
And Nintendo should at least do something with Slippi and Melee like hire the creator for either Ultimate online to improve it or a Melee port of some kind.
Take Sonic Mania for example, Sega decided that fans just like these that made their own fan games before should be hired.

@Gwynbleidd because they brought emulation and modding into it, after Nintendo asked them to stop.

@crashcontrol because Nintendo has the right to stop use of their IP for commercial purposes (such as a paid tournament), then it is perfectly moral of them to do so. It is immoral to use someone else's art for profit without consent.

And it’s already losing steam. Competitive Smash is seriously the worst part about Smash.

Really bad move by Nintendo, they are really overdoing it on takedowns and copyright claims. I guess they learned nothing about the WiiU era....

A lot of focus here on what Nintendo could or should do, but the fact is Nintendo have to defend their IP in quite an aggressive fashion, or risk losing sole ownership to it. Nintendo could do like other companies have done (Ms. Pac-Man, Sonic Mania), and release something created by someone else themselves, but they can’t allow other companies making profit of modded releases of their games.

@crashcontrol They can, but the thing is that Nintendo is already stretched thin due to COVID to really do this for a rather niche part of the Smash community. And as mentioned before I don't know if Sakurai would even want to re-visit Melee considering his mixed feelings on the subject. In this case, Nintendo had the right to pull the plug here as they don't authorize hacks/mods on their products and this would have required them. It sucks, but it is the way it is and things will be back to normal in 2021. Big House should have just played nice for the sake of future events and just not done Melee this year knowing Nintendo's feelings on the subject.

@Sinton Yeah, but Nintendo isn’t making a profit off melee anymore and Slippi also was never making a profit.

@crashcontrol But they do off Smash. To Nintendo, the brand is more important than an individual game. If someone is making money off their brand they can step in and stop it if they don't like how it is being represented. Which this is the case of.

@Wexter I think the reason Nintendo did that on The Big House was because they were originally sponsoring them.
I also think people are overeating over the #FreeMelee a little bit, as so many other non sponsored tournaments had happened without issue.
But I do see were the #SaveSmash is coming from as Nintendo could’ve supported the scene a whole lot more than they are now.

@ConlanMass Proof, please.

@ConlanMass Prove that the copies are suspicious.

@crashcontrol it doesn't matter if Slippi is make ng a profit, or if Melee for s currently for sale: the tournament was going to make a profit off of emulation and modding, and Nintendo will not abide that. As is their place to decide, no one else

@crashcontrol Nintendo isn’t making a profit of Melee, but they are making money of the Smash Bros. franchise and every single character in the game (well, perhaps not Captain Falcon...). If they say «sure, just use Mario in this mod», they’re at risk of others claiming the right to use him in their mod with or without profit as well. Is it a big risk? Perhaps not, but a risk with potential devestating ramifications.

And for all we know, perhaps Nintendo would like to make money out of Melee again someday as well.

@crashcontrol How has Nintendo been unsupportive in recent years? By allowing their games to be played without issues? Promoting events and being a sponsor? Allowing the scene to grow naturally rather than forcing it like EA, Activision and Blizzard do? By constantly supporting the main game with not one, but TWO season passes rather than new retail packages like Namco, Capcom and Never Realms do? By inviting Smash scene members to E3 when they do massive Smash reveals?

I don't know seems Nintendo does A LOT for the Smash community. Just because they don't do HD remasters of Melee does not mean they do not support the scene.

@TG16_IS_BAE Nintendo issued a COD, ergo they had suspicions. They don't need to prove anything, nor does anyone else. The ethical burden here was on the tournament to use Nintendo's IP in line with Nintendo's wishes.

@TG16_IS_BAE A modded and free copy isn't proof enough?
Can you prove that those copies were bought legally?

This whole thing is ridiculous and the same old story. Someone does something they know is going to be an issue and then cry foul when they get called on it.

Yeah, Nintendo should just condone the piracy of their software and forget about the repercussions that could have with anyone else wanting to pirate their stuff.

@ConlanMass The point is that nobody can, so stop trying to argue something without an adequate burden of proof.

@Parmandur Nintendo is doing just fine. They don’t need to bully little guys to protect their IP, especially when it’s such a tiny amount of people. I have no sympathy for Nintendo, sorry they take in millions, it would be easy to overlook something that they “think” is suspicious.

@TG16_IS_BAE shrug I have no sympathy for tantrums thrown over the protection of legal rights.

I get that, using an old Rom on my phone is illegal, a little naughty, just like walking on the grass, or picking flowers in the park, when there is a sign asking me not to. But imagine if I decided to make walking on the grass, and picking flowers a big event and invited loads of people to do the same thing, put up posters etc. I'm not sure this analogy works but the point is, I'm not surprised Nintendo has requested people pay money for their products... even if it is hard for people to buy or use online.

@Wexter For the record I am not a melee fanboy as I have not played the game.
I’m just saying that they haven’t supported the competitive scene as much as companies like Capcom or Bandai Namco.

Lol. People get punished for doing something they weren't supposed to do and cry when they're caught.

Nothing new.

@crashcontrol What specifically has Nintendo done to not support Smash as well as Capcom or Bandai Namco outside of re-releasing old games? Some companies like Tecmo are way worse with serious micro-transactions. I'm at this point legit curious. And let's not forget Namco Bandai are the ones who wrote the netcode for Smash and their netcode for Soul Caliber and Tekken is just as bad and Capcom stopped letting Street Fighter IV be played at tournaments rather for Street Fighter V (which was a majorly inferior game)... >.>

@liljmoore IKR, it's like people have just chosen to overlook the fact that they are handing out modded ROMs and are making money as a result.

Blimey, Nintendo can be tightwads at times, but they absolutely had the right to shut it down and I'd have done the same.

@Iggy-Koopa I know Nintendo had the right but Slippi (which is the online mod) has made no money at all as it is a free project.

@AlexSora89: Idiot comment of the year. Melee and Ultimate are vastly different games. What right do you have to force people into playing one or the other?

@crashcontrol The COD wasn't against Slippi, it was against a for-profit tournament making money off of Nitnendo IP

@ShadowSniper7 They are different games, one of the key differences is that Ultiamte can be monetized for esports online, while Melee cannot, per the IP holder.

@Yorumi
Sometimes it seems that most of the NL community sides with Nintendo on the topic of "it's their right to do so" instead of even giving a chance to "if they should". And that's the reason I find most comments in NL about competitive Smash so... sad.

The fact that Nintendo has the power to stop a tournament on one of their games is so strange to me. It's like a hockey stick manufacturer being allowed to stop an ice hockey tournament because the players are putting grip tape on the sticks.

I do not see the issue. To get Melee into the tournament, they have to use illegal copies of the game. Nintendo won't allow that, which is understandable. Remove Melee from the line up. Ultimate is fully online compatible.

@Strumpan Is it an illegal modification to the hockey sticks to put grip tape on them?

@Trikeboy Of course not, you are allowed to do whatever you want with the stick, because you own it. That's exactly my point.

@nessisonett Nintendo doesn't need to offer anything instead because Nintendo is done with Melee. It is an old game that Nintendo no longer makes any kind of profit on, which only provides Nintendo with negative publicity, given how toxic the 'community' is towards newer titles and to its more vulnerable members. Nintendo has literally no incentive to 'free Melee' and every incentive to shut it down.

@Luffymcduck If they should doesn't really matter. They won't because they have no incentive to. All they are alienating is a highly toxic community that deathrides their new titles and abuses its own vulnerable members and they don't even get a single cent out of it.

Try to think like a business. Why on earth show the Melee community any kind of goodwill?

I like playing Melee.

I also like Melee tournaments.

But I understand why Nintendo cannot allow such a big event to openly condone the use of unlicensed copies of the game. That would create a legal precedence of Nintendo not taking action against software piracy.

Wow allot of comments! But do I understand correctly, the reason why Nintendo took action was because of the no Legal version of the game, correct?

@Kyranosaurus Thank for your kind reply, I always check the bits that NL report and every time in order to download this or that there is always a cost or patreonage attached.

And yes I am bored of NL's infactuation with this side of gaming, but I also appreciate my comments may have the same effect on people too so thanks again for your kind reply.

Sorry but this is stupid. Nintendo is stopping people from playing a game that they no longer support? Bad Nintendo!

You know if Nintendo allows piracy, it makes it harder for them to argue in court against it, right?

@crashcontrol Hahahahaha. Ulitmate's online works very well, and I live in Bolivia, the country that has the worst internet in South America. Melee doesn't have more "competitive" players, it has a bunch of cry babies on their 30's and 40's who are still virgins and live off their parents, and they only play with TWO characters of the whole roster of that game hahaaha. I guess that must be your case too. So, grow a pair, at least hahaha.

@Parmandur “If Nintendo comes to you and says "do not do A, we feel that harms our IP, please do B instead,"”

Except there was no B. It was just don’t do A. If anyone has any more information I missed, let me know. That’s what some of us are annoyed at. There’s literally no other options in a Pandemic situation. I'm also not outraged, just discussing here.

Also, people keep throwing Big House under the bus. What exactly is it that they did wrong? I keep seeing they refused to comply. So what happened exactly before the C&D? (Quotes would be nice.)

@Strumpan bad analogy. The legally relevant analogy is a musician who doesn't want their music used in a venue they disapprove of: which, legally, a musician can do. It is called right of performance, and it applies to video games in a commercial context like a paid tournament. Nintendo doesn't even need a good reason, they can shut down a public performance.

@Strumpan Bad analogy as the stick manufacturer only makes a tool used to play a game. Nintendo owns the game Smash Melee, where no one owns the sport of hockey. Your analogy could work if we were talking about controllers rather than the game itself...

@Luffymcduck short answer: they have the right to protect their intellectual property as they see fit, and they should do so due to their obligations to their shareholders. Done.

@BlubberWhale Nintendo said they approached the Big House and asked them to not do Melee, and Big House did not comply. Big House told media outlets this is accurate. Basically, they were told to just do Ultimate, and refused, so they can't do Ultimate now because Nintendo is using their right to control performances. There is no Melee option on the table for online, as far as Nintendo is concerned, and that's all that matters.

@Parmandur Yes, well, that is the law they are using, and it has been debated whether it should be applicable to video games or not. Currently in the US the court says yes. I am not saying they don't have legal rights, just that they shouldn't have. Nintendo have many times themselves said that their games are not to be considered art, but rather means of entertainment.

@Strumpan You do realize they say that as marketing spin right? Nintendo has made straight up some of the most artistic and impactful games of the past 30 years. They say it's "entertainment" rather than "art" to present their consoles as family-friendly funboxes and not super-serious game consoles to keep a hold on the casual and family markets (aka their bread and butter markets).

But, what is Big House offering Nintendo for the Big N to break their own policy on iSOs and unauthorized mods? Not one person has answered that question without a super dubious answer of "Free Marketing" for a game Nintendo stopped selling new copies of about 15 years ago (and it's not even free considering Nintendo was a sponser). Even when Nintendo allowed the usage of Smash Ultimate instead and would remain a sponsor of the event before the organizers basically told Nintendo to go "f-off" and openly defied the wishes of their MAJOR sponsor... that's just bad business.

@Strumpan I mean, precedent has the weight of law, so it totally applies.

The thing is, Nintendo are using the same loophole in the law to their own benefit by claiming their games are not art but "entertainment" - yet they use artistic copy right laws to protect their IPs.

It's a bit hypocritical.

Now the organizers of this event are aware of this so they were just antagonising Nintendo, which then caused Nintendo to pull their sponsorship and now this.

How much longer that loophole favours Nintendo is yet to be seen but sooner or later Nintendo will have to choose which is more important.

@Wexter I agree this is what Nintendo should do business-wise, I'm not questioning their decision. I just don't like that they are allowed to do it by law.

@Strumpan that makes no sense.

You agree that they should be able to protect their IPs but you don't think it should be within the parameters of the law?

What kind of fun time herbs are you smoking? I want some too...

@Strumpan That's some mental gymnastics brother. So you agree Nintendo should protect their copyright over their game. Yet, Nintendo should not be permitted under the law to enforce how they want their copywritten product to be presented? It's a very wishy-washy stance man and based on your earlier analogy about hockey sticks I get the vibe you're not too informed about how this works on both a law level, business level or I'd argue even a moral level.

As soon as Big House declined Nintendo's compromise for an already unique situation they're in the moral wrong on this one. No one has even argued why we need a Melee tournament while we're still in the COVID quagmire or why Nintendo should even allow them to compromise on their policies for this one situation.

@Razer I find it rare we line-up on issues like these but... yeah generally that. Kinda a BS hypocritical loophole they use, but it's there and be very silly of them to not take advantage of it.

@Razer "art" versus "entertainment" isn't really a legal distinction at all, that's just marketing. Nintendo wants to make popular blockbusters, not arthouse pieces. But the same law applies either way.

@Wexter How is that a wishy-washy stance? I mean, given that Nintendo are allowed to protect their IP in this way, they totally should. It would be stupid of them not to. At the same time, I think it would be better if they weren't allowed. You probably just misunderstood me, because you're clearly not stupid. And the hockey stick analogy was to clarify how I think the law is strange, not to clarify what the law is.

@Strumpan Why should they not be allowed though by law? You've not really answered that part which is why it sounds wishy-washy. The hockey stick analogy is a bad one because you are comparing a tool to a complete artistic work. One enables you to play a sport that also requires other tools (helmets, cleats/skates, padding, a net of somekind and a ball/puck) the other is the artistic work that allows for the function of play within the artistic media. So they aren't really comparable and the closer comparative analogy would be books, movies and music (which @Parmandur already presented)

So you need to explain why you believe a video game should function the same as a tool within copywrite law or why you think games, in general, are comparable to tools rather than other artistic mediums.

@Strumpan they should be allowed to protect their IPs but I also think laws should be put in place to allow fans to use these pieces of media entertainment to create fan fiction, which would incorporate these events too as long as dues are paid to the original creator.

This would actually benefit all parties. But then you get into the whole issue of regulation and how the original creator would intend for those IPs to be used.

It's all a complicated situation which is why it is the way it is now.

@crashcontrol The organisers make money from a tournament that uses Slippi as a means to an end, so while it's not directly making money it's enabling revenue through hacked, modded copies of Melee.

Of course Nintendo were going to drop the hammer.

@Wexter Well, I think a game is different from a piece of art such as music, in the sense that the game is a tool to play, especially in the case of a tournament. I'm not saying games should not be considered art, but this is not a general statement about how all art should be treated legally. I also don't consider your opinion invalid, even though I disagree.

@EvrgrnCmln
I do.
They've used competitive Smash players in their marketing (E3 invitational tournaments), a lot of Smash Bros influencers spread the publicity for new characters etc. As for the events that came to light last summer... the only good think that came out of that is the fact Smash bros community has to make it more safe and better .

As for the toxicity thing... I've always found that interesting. Maybe my country's community is just perfect. And honestly, with over 10 years of experience with this site, NL community is the one I'd call toxic.

Well that's enough for me for now. I think I'll just continue this discussion on the forum.

@Strumpan But a game is art. You have composers, artists, narrative writers coming together to try to invoke emotion. That is the main goal of art is to invoke emotion and games do that. Now, tools on their own are not designed to invoke emotion and need a setup or "game" to be played in to do that. A game is not a tool, a console and controller are a tool as they allow you to interact with the game much like your hockey stick analogy as a hockey stick on its own cannot invoke emotion, but a game of hockey does. A game is a work of art designed to invoke emotions and should have the same protections as film, books and other artistic mediums.

@Wexter I agree on all you say except "...and should have the same protections as film, books and other artistic mediums."

@Strumpan But, you haven't fully explained why without making false comparatives. Please elaborate as you agree that games are art, but do not deserve the same protections of other artistic mediums.

I was harassed at a small smash event in town and never went back. I believe it.

@LongLiveMelee In addition to everything you said, you left out the biggest issue of all: "brand".

When we purchase a game we aren't purchasing the property or brand we are purchasing a mere copy. The code they wrote is also what's protected, not just the physically or digitally sold product. So when someone tampers with code they are tampering with a property. Now imagine if you or I were permitted to do that. What would stop Sony or any other rival company from doing it? Copyright laws were put into place to prevent "that". Unfortunately that also spans to general users as well because you cannot be biased towards who can break copyright law and who can't.

The problem goes further. Remember, modders like to do things that aren't exactly tasteful like putting phallic objects in Mario stages. Parents that see that crap will flip out and the brand is then ruined because they aren't gamers right? They don't know wtf a mod even is. So try explaining to some black grandma that sees a local tournament at a mall and thinks: isn't that the Mario character the kids like? And upon closer look, some jack@$$ teen has a modded version with Stone Cold Steve Austin throwing up middle fingers because he thought it was funny and so did we! Grandma sees that and all she know is "Aw hell to the naw I don't want my grandbaby playing that *****.! She can get that Jake and Dexter game on that Player Station or whatever!" Lol I say that jokingly but that's how it goes.

You wanna talk about morals? There's nothing immoral about a company protecting it's brands. There's no morality behind that at all. It's electronics entertainment. Its not someone doing an IG Live filming someone bleeding out on the street. THAT is a moral issue. Protecting your property so that future customers aren't turned away from something they don't understand? If ANYTHING is moral THAT would be it. You should WANT them to do this if you're really a fan because the only thing that needs to happen for Nintendo to collapse is for the image of the Mario brand to be ruined. Apparently ppl forgot that not only is it pure gold, but every entertainment company in the world wants it and many have tried to claim it in very devious ways, especially Microsoft.

Nintendo has enemies. And by allowing gamers to do whatever they please with Nintendo's properties for the sake of the community, Nintendo can only open themselves up to attacks from their competitors in the process because if they can't stop the gaming community from doing something objectionable, how in hell can they stop their rivals???

Lastly, of course they want to sell their new product. If you don't continue making money you don't stay in business. That simple. We already have a company like that called Sega. It's either Nintendo puts out new product, or pulls an EA and reskins Melee every cycle. But they HAVE to make a profit. No if ans or buts about it. The funny thing is how much the Melee purists demand Nintendo support, but don't care if Nintendo takes a financial hit because "oh they're a multi-billion dollar company" so was Sega once. And I refuse to lose Nintendo because their shareholders lost faith in Nintendo's ability to continue turning profit. You should all feel the same way. Sorry. I fkn HATE Sony and MS.

@crashcontrol while Nintendo isn't profiting off "Melee" they are profiting off the "brand". That whole series is built around the Mario brand. And all the characters, likenesses, names, images, etc associated with Melee are still being used to profit. Image is the most important thing for a business, not how many units of a software you sell. If the image is tarnished you aren't selling crap at all. And if someone out there makes Melee so much bigger than anything else Nintendo does it draws attention away from Nintendo. No one should be competing against their own product! Lol Sales go beyond the gaming community. Nintendo has to appeal to a wide variety of ppl including those who don't play games. How can they introduce new ppl to new games if old fans keep pushing an old game into the big spotlight? And what if old fans do things with that old game that turn new people away, such as tampering with code and modding obscenities into it which we have seen? Sure that's not what this is about, but to prevent it from happening altogether that's were copyright law comes in.

@Cosats Hacking and modding isn't illegal per se. In general, I can do with my stuff what I want. And that is not unethical but that is what property rights are about in the first place. With regards to the current events, both parties try to play the victim . Nintendo doesn't want to make people think that it is a good idea to use a hacked ISO of one of their old NGC games for online play via PC. Even if it is. Cause it is a good idea. That is why they call everybody a "pirate". Pretending as if it would be ok to get Nintendo on board while using hacks and tricks in the background is also really shady. That is why they are "heartbroken".

@ReWane They don't, really. Their issue was the use of illegal, pirated copies of the game, not with modification. Piracy is still piracy regardless of how old something is. That's why many countries have copyright laws and why production companies copyright strike the illegal redistribution of songs that are 50 years old.

@SeantheDon29 Also if I recall correctly, in general the Japanese don't appreciate parodies/fanworks/etc (they see it as a perversion of their work). That might be a part of it...