REDMOND, Wash. — Earlier this week, Nintendo announced new restrictions globally on running tournaments for Nintendo-owned games, most prominently Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The new restrictions include caps on participants & prize pools in unlicensed tournaments. To get past these guidelines, tournament organizers will need to apply for a license.
Some members of the community, took a bit of a rash approach to combat the new guidelines, choosing to try and straight up ignore them.
“Oh, Nintendo said we can’t organize tournaments anymore?” said Video Game Boot Camp’s GimR, a prominent TO in the Smash community.
“Or what? No, seriously. If I put on another tournament, outside of these rules, what are they gonna do? Come take my GameCube away? Arrest me? I can’t wait to find out because these guys are gonna have to come and pry their games out of my hands before I stop organizing tournaments.”
The sentiment was echoed by many members of the Smash community, including professional Melee player Joseph “Mang0” Marquez.
“I don’t care what we have to do to work around this, but they’re never gonna stop me from playing Melee,” Mang0 said. “Whatever it takes to keep playing the game, we’re gonna do. If that means we’re streaming the tournament on some dark web shit so Nintendo doesn’t raid us, so be it. If that means me and Cody Schwab have to play on a CRT at the dump in front of 3 guys, you can find us at the junkyard.”
After hearing about the Smash community’s thoughts, Nintendo’s legal offices were in a panic trying to figure out the answer to GimR’s “or what” question.
“Oh fuck,” said Logan Stapp, a lawyer for Nintendo. “GimR’s right. What can we do? I kinda thought everyone would just listen. Now we have to come up with consequences?”
At press time, 50 Nintendo lawyers were sitting in front of a whiteboard that just read “arrest them?”
