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Nintendo is well known for its really strict and often anti-consumer policies and actions to fans and modders alike, and the recent news about Nintendo changing its tournament and eSports policies to be even more strict than before made in October 24th, 2023, have caused nothing but disdain and a stir for everyone even remotely interested in any kind of tournament with Nintendo games involved, mainly Super Smash Bros., and all games Nintendo for that matter.

This new tournaments policy changes made by Nintendo caught up to the Norwegian Consumer Council's senior advisor, Thomas Iversen, who has recently shared his thoughts and possible actions by his and European Consumer organizations about Nintendo's latest draconian policies regarding tournaments and eSports, and other circumstances that involve Nintendo's franchises and/or IPs.

In a recent interview with PressFire.no, Iversen mentioned that Nintendo has submitted any kind of terms that binds users and consumers to Nintendo's policies, stating (and translated):

Nintendo sets limits on how consumers, clubs, associations and other non-commercial actors can use games and equipment. However, I cannot see that these terms are presented in such a way that consumers are bound.
Terms that set clear boundaries for the right to dispose of what you have purchased must be highlighted clearly before the purchase of games and consoles is entered into.

This basically means that, since Nintendo didn't invoke these terms back when the games were originally released, they cannot enforce these new terms, given they were not present back on the time of purchase, quoting:

Contract terms that give the company the upper hand over its customers will soon be unreasonable, and can be set aside.
In any case, a unilateral change in how the games console you have bought can be used will quickly come to the fore with both the Consumer Purchase Act and the Marketing Act.

Iversen didn't stop there, as he is also aware that Nintendo is heavily opposed to game modifications, given how that's one of the points from the new policy, and mentioned the previous lawsuit that Nintendo lost decades ago against the Game Genie, (a tool that allowed gamers to modify their games all the back in the NES days), setting the precedent for game modification to become legal (something that Japan has since made illegal recently as well), and also touched upon the matter:

One would think that this issue was resolved then, as long as the use does not conflict with copyright.
There can be many legitimate reasons for modifying games. For example, modification is often necessary to set up interactivity in connection with speedrunning, challenge runs or downgrading to older versions.
As long as the use does not violate Nintendo's copyright, I cannot see that Nintendo can unilaterally set restrictions on modifications that fall under the free use of the game or console that has been purchased.

The matter gets even worse for Nintendo, since they explicitly mention the use of only their officially licensed controllers, with the Norwegian Handicap Association and Handicapped Children's Parents Associations expressing their thoughts regarding Nintendo's new policies with board member Håvard Ravn Ottesen stating:

For us, it is equal participation that matters. Our children deserve to play and participate just as much as other children

Nintendo's new policies basically means that any kind of third party controllers or accessories that would allow people with handicaps or disabilities are forbidden, essentially excluding them from any kind of tournament participation. Iversen expresses his discomfort and criticizes Nintendo's stance on disallowing non-licensed controllers for this matter as well:

I have no respect for such a restriction.
Firstly, it will prevent people with physical challenges from playing, and in addition such a closure of the system will be an act restricting competition.

To close up the interview, Iversen promises to take the matters from the Norwegian Consumer Council into other European consumer colleagues and organizations to prompt a proper action towards these kind of restrictions:

We are following the development, and will take it up with our European colleagues and continuously assess whether this is something to which we should react more systematically.

The actions of the Consumer Council is what forced Nintendo to both change a policy to allow users to cancel pre-orders for Nintendo Switch games, and to also offer repairs for Joycons that suffered from the infamous joystick drift free of charge, which is an issue that still prevails in Nintendo Switch systems to this day, even in newer iterations of the system like the Switch Lite and Switch OLED.

Multiple other examples of previous actions by Nintendo when it comes to tournaments can be seen in the Smash World Tour Tournament being cancelled a year ago due to their stated policies (before the new changes), ProjectM+ being removed from tournaments' lineups due to Nintendo's restrictions about game modifications and "piracy", and; during the first year of the pandemic where no in-person events were allowed, cancelling The Big House's tournament due to the use of Slippi, which is a software that allowed online play for Super Smash Bros. Melee, arguing it "allowed or condoned piracy" back when no other way to held tournaments was viable due to the worldwide events.
These are just a handful of Nintendo's on-going long list of C&D and DMCA actions towards fan projects and tournaments.

Source

 

[AdenTheThird]

That makes sense, but I feel like they gone a bit overboard with their polices.

Nintendo has always been super trigger-happy with their products. Why, as far back as 1992, when they sued the company behind Game Genie for copyright infringement!
(They lost that case, by the way. And they've seen mostly similar results since.

 

[Viri]

That makes sense, but I feel like they gone a bit overboard with their polices.

Imo, they're doing it on purpose. They're trying to make it such a pain in the ass, so they can just just give up and stop trying. Nintendo wants the Smash tourney scene to DIE.

The Smash tourney scene has such a bad reputation, Nintendo wants nothing to do with them, and wants it to DIE.

 

[yoyoyo69]

God bless the Norwegians, just straight forward common sense. No messing around, no bulls****. To hell with corporate greed (they would and do make serious bank regardless).

Damn GB left the EU (we screwed lul)

 

[SDA]

Nintendo is Nintendo. What else do I need to say?

 

[xdarkx]

Imo, they're doing it on purpose. They're trying to make it such a pain in the ass, so they can just just give up and stop trying. Nintendo wants the Smash tourney scene to DIE.

The Smash tourney scene has such a bad reputation, Nintendo wants nothing to do with them, and wants it to DIE.

That's a fair point. Though I'm sure that there are Smash fans that enjoys competitive Smash but got lumped in with some bad eggs that caused the Smash community to have bad reputations.

 

[DuoForce]

I love that Nintendo is the most anti-consumer company out there yet their fans scream and throw fits over people playing Nintendo games on their computers

 

[EpikJimmer]

The fact that i'm not surprised anymore is even worse.

 

[chrisrlink]

so this is pro consumer (if i read it right) 3 WORDS....SUCK IT NINTENDO

Post automatically merged: Nov 21, 2023

I love that Nintendo is the most anti-consumer company out there yet their fans scream and throw fits over people playing Nintendo games on their computers

didn't the deck oled do something to prevent emulators from running?

 

[ShadowOne333]

didn't the deck oled do something to prevent emulators from running?

That'd be all over gaming news if it were true, where did you hear that?

 

[fate6]

That'd be all over gaming news if it were true, where did you hear that?

It came to them in a dream cause there is no software differences between the Deck revisions.
I dont even know how Valve would go about doing something like that without removing the desktop mode entirely and even then you can always install another OS on it.

 

[The Catboy]

didn't the deck oled do something to prevent emulators from running?

Considering the SteamDeck uses Arch Linux and Flatpak, they would have to make a lot of easily reversible changes to make that happen. Plus, Steam literally distributes emulators.

 

[Metoroid0]

I honestly dont see any benefit for nintendo by being dicks to fans other than being dicks.

Post automatically merged: Nov 25, 2023

Imo, they're doing it on purpose. They're trying to make it such a pain in the ass, so they can just just give up and stop trying. Nintendo wants the Smash tourney scene to DIE.

The Smash tourney scene has such a bad reputation, Nintendo wants nothing to do with them, and wants it to DIE.

Anotneverything is about nintendo.

Post automatically merged: Nov 25, 2023

That's a fair point. Though I'm sure that there are Smash fans that enjoys competitive Smash but got lumped in with some bad eggs that caused the Smash community to have bad reputations.

So?

 

[Waifu4Life]

I wish the EU would go after Nintendo for locking save data back-up behind a paywall.

 

[J-Machine]

i'll be that wierdo that understands nintendo's intent even if I don't agree with it. Mele is from 3 generations back. they aren't gonna make money on it and it's seen as a potential obstacle in adoption of new game sales of that series. also being highly unregulated means people can do things that can harm thier ability to protect thier ip (slippy or using trademark in promotional material) Nintendo is in a wierd place where thier entire worth is placed in their i.p and it's real easy to lose that if you are lax in proving you tried to protect it. i guarantee donkey kong really cemented thier international policy in this regard cause they almost lost everything right then and there.

that said other companies are def more lax in this regard and aren't worried about corporate shenanigans but they are generally already running on poor margins and need to hedge bets on accepting community use of thier ip. if nintendo lost mario it would be completely over but they have a giant nest egg so the losses they would incur are far more massive

 

[bap2012]

i'll be that wierdo that understands nintendo's intent even if I don't agree with it. Mele is from 3 generations back. they aren't gonna make money on it and it's seen as a potential obstacle in adoption of new game sales of that series. also being highly unregulated means people can do things that can harm thier ability to protect thier ip (slippy or using trademark in promotional material) Nintendo is in a wierd place where thier entire worth is placed in their i.p and it's real easy to lose that if you are lax in proving you tried to protect it. i guarantee donkey kong really cemented thier international policy in this regard cause they almost lost everything right then and there.

that said other companies are def more lax in this regard and aren't worried about corporate shenanigans but they are generally already running on poor margins and need to hedge bets on accepting community use of thier ip. if nintendo lost mario it would be completely over but they have a giant nest egg so the losses they would incur are far more massive

Smash Ultimate has sold over 32 million copies, Melee is not an obstacle to it or any other new Smash games because casual players (most players) do not know or care about competitive play or the qualities of Melee that draw people to it as opposed to other newer Smash games. I get why Nintendo cares about this enough to raise hell about it, but there's a reason they're the only company that behaves this way when it comes to their most diehard fans and players...

Post automatically merged: Nov 27, 2023

Imo, they're doing it on purpose. They're trying to make it such a pain in the ass, so they can just just give up and stop trying. Nintendo wants the Smash tourney scene to DIE.

The Smash tourney scene has such a bad reputation, Nintendo wants nothing to do with them, and wants it to DIE.

It's not even about their bad reputation necessarily, as Nintendo has been trying to kill the scene for over a decade now (i.e. evo 2013, MLG Orlando 2010)

 

[Metoroid0]

I wish the EU would go after Nintendo for locking save data back-up behind a paywall.

thats the most shitiest thing i have ever seen when ibought nintendo, i couldnt believe they did that.
It would be equivalent of renting a memory card on play station one.

Nintendo should save user data like that on every server they make, new or old and migrate it so suers can access it without restrictions even after 30 years.
Its their decision not to enable users to keep saves on their PC but on nintnendo servers.
SAVES ARE REALLY PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENTS AND PROGRESS UNIQUE TO EVERY PLAYER. in a word its our own creation and nintendo cant own it. we worked (played) for hours for it!

Post automatically merged: Dec 18, 2023

i'll be that wierdo that understands nintendo's intent even if I don't agree with it. Mele is from 3 generations back. they aren't gonna make money on it and it's seen as a potential obstacle in adoption of new game sales of that series. also being highly unregulated means people can do things that can harm thier ability to protect thier ip (slippy or using trademark in promotional material) Nintendo is in a wierd place where thier entire worth is placed in their i.p and it's real easy to lose that if you are lax in proving you tried to protect it. i guarantee donkey kong really cemented thier international policy in this regard cause they almost lost everything right then and there.

that said other companies are def more lax in this regard and aren't worried about corporate shenanigans but they are generally already running on poor margins and need to hedge bets on accepting community use of thier ip. if nintendo lost mario it would be completely over but they have a giant nest egg so the losses they would incur are far more massive

we all understand nintendo, we are not stupid. we read laws. but that doesnt make laws right. they are not written by gods on heaven but by humans and some humans are greedy and corrupted and also stupid. in other words laws are not perfect so they are not always right or tailored to be good or to serve people for good.

Post automatically merged: Dec 18, 2023

Nintendo wants the Smash tourney scene to DIE.

No one ask them tbh, people do what they want and find alternate rutes. its that simple. piracy, tournament, and fan projects will never die, nintendo is battling windmills. they are basically insane at this point. if anyone is going to "die" its gonna be Nintendo at the end if they continue like this. Hollywood is slowly dying just like disney etc...

 

[Waifu4Life]

thats the most shitiest thing i have ever seen when ibought nintendo, i couldnt believe they did that.
It would be equivalent of renting a memory card on play station one.

Nintendo should save user data like that on every server they make, new or old and migrate it so suers can access it without restrictions even after 30 years.
Its their decision not to enable users to keep saves on their PC but on nintnendo servers.
SAVES ARE REALLY PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENTS AND PROGRESS UNIQUE TO EVERY PLAYER. in a word its our own creation and nintendo cant own it. we worked (played) for hours for it!

The Wii gave you the option to backup most save data, but when people hacked the Wii using save data, they removed it from the Wii U. When people hacked the Wii U using a web browser, they removed that feature from the Switch. In short, instead of being competent and patching futur security holes, they just create a disservice to their consumers and remove features.