Nintendo just released these guidelines around running a “community” tournament. In other words, an unlicensed tournament. Limiting the player cap to 200 (300 for online), no profit allowed, entry fees must be under $15 USD, must use Nintendo online servers (no Slippi), and some other stuff.
Not sure which major tournaments from this last year had a license and which didn’t, but I remember the Smash World Tour fiasco and Panda’s implosion. I know Hbox said he’s going to try to keep running Coinbox until Nintendo themselves tells him to stop in writing, but I wonder how this will affect other big TOs. How many of them are still trying to sneak under the radar unlicensed?
Honestly, it’s BS how Nintendo treats their competitive communities
@pikasaurX4 Unliscensed is redundant, Nearly zero tournaments are liscensed.
The large tournaments that existed for a while generally are licensed. E.g Genesis has a license, and werent affected by the whole panda global situation. Genesis organizers are saying its still going to happen (which would imply they aren’t beholden to these rules)
Exactly. These rules only apply to tournaments that can’t or won’t get a license. It still sucks since Nintendo not only won’t support Smash tournaments or their players, but they also expect a “cut” in the form of a license fee and permission to enforce whatever rules they want
Edit: For example: Melee Coinbox (and partially Ultimate Coinbox) do not follow these rules. The events are unlicensed with greater than 300 entrants, I don’t know if they are for profit, but they use game imagery for advertising, and they do not use Nintendo’s online servers. Under these new guidelines, Team Liquid runs the risk that Nintendo will come after them and force them to shut the events down or pay for a license (They might already have one, but Hbox was implying they do not)
Many of the smaller ones, for sure. And most locals and maybe even some regionals will fall under these “community tournament” guidelines as long as they have fewer than 200 entrants and aren’t for profit. However, Nintendo has been pushing tournament organizers to pay for a license to run those tournaments since at least early 2022 under the threat of legal action.
For example, some of the major tournaments of 2023 did get a license from Nintendo. Usually you can tell because (at least for Melee) they won’t have the clean Slippi playback and Pokémon Stadium is not frozen. I can’t speak for the TOs, but I would assume The Big House was licensed