Norwegian Customer Council to bring forth Nintendo's new tournament and copyright policies to European Consumer Organizations
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):
Thomas Iversen said: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:
Thomas Iversen said: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:
Thomas Iversen said: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:
Håvard Ravn Ottesen said: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:
Thomas Iversen said: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:
Thomas Iversen said: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.
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