When it comes to Nintendo and Smash, it seems that Nintendo rarely, if not ever, hits the mark in terms of supporting the community around their beloved game. Nintendo has been known for canceling tournaments for Project Plus and attempts in blacklisting Smash Melee events. However, on September 27, Nintendo announced two online tournaments with prizes that range from jackets to gaming chairs. Unfortunately, this half measure has only hurt their image within the Smash community. This article discusses Nintendo ran tournaments and why the Smash community is not ecstatic about this announcement.
Nintendo and Community Driven Tournaments
In the past, Nintendo would rarely touch community-driven Smash events. Recently, however, Nintendo has been cracking down on community-run tournaments like Riptide and Low Tide City, forcing these tournaments to cancel Project Plus events. While it makes some sense that Nintendo doesn’t like a modded version of their game, the timing of these cancelations from Nintendo was put in place just two weeks before the tournament.
— Riptide (@RiptideSSB) August 27, 2021
— LTC Esports (@LTCesports) September 14, 2021
These cancellations hurt the community at large due to taking an event away and hindering community-driven Smash events. The showrunners have already paid for the venue and are forced to give refunds to players who can’t attend due to the cancellation. It seems like Nintendo is intentionally canceling these tournaments close to the start of the event to hurt the showrunners and hinder them from supporting these modded smash games.
Prize Pool
The Smash community rarely gets monetary support from Nintendo. Most of the time, a “Nintendo sponsored event” just has Nintendo’s logo at the bottom of the screen and some Nintendo commercials with some Nintendo-themed trophies or jackets. The Smash community has released that Nintendo is not willing to help in any meaningful way and have opted to stray away from Nintendo when it comes to Smash tournaments. Instead, the smash community relies solely on the community at large for monetary help. It is laughable to see a company-supported event have a grand prize of a trophy and a jacket versus a Community-driven event that has the potential to have prize pools in the USD 10,000 or higher range like Smash Summit 11 having a prize pool of USD 155,669.
Rule Set
Competitive smash has always had a standard ruleset—no items, multiple maps with their strengths and weaknesses for different characters and playstyles for example. Unfortunately, Nintendo can’t even acknowledge the competitive scene and give their tournaments the standard competitive ruleset. Instead, their tournaments have two different rulesets that do not reflect the competitive smash scene.
In Community-driven events for Ultimate, the stock count is three with a time limit of seven minutes. For the “Nintendo VS U.S. Challenge Cup, the event has two stocks with a time limit of five minutes with only Omega and battlefield variants of stages. This shorter time supports a more campy playstyle and can lead to more time-outs instead of stock finishes.
Want to see the “Nintendo VS U.S. Challenge Cup ruleset? Click here!
The “Nintendo VS U.S. Fall Open 2021” has a somewhat similar ruleset to the Smash competitive scene. There are three stocks, seven-minute time-limited items and FS meter off and a random selection of competitive legal stages. However, the matches are only best of one, which means players cannot adapt to their opponents over the course of a set.
Want to see The “Nintendo VS U.S. Fall Open 2021” ruleset? Click here!
Community Outcry
— Mr. Nice (@SenorBuen0) September 14, 2021
Shit sorry, can’t enter. Switch is being used right now pic.twitter.com/gu8VGSLU20
— HugS (@HugS86) September 27, 2021
It seems as if Nintendo noticed the outcry due to the cancellation of Project plus events and wanted to reach out to the community with their tournaments. However, the Nintendo VS series of tournaments are not even remotely close to what the community wants from Nintendo. The smash community responded to Ninteond’s tweets, trashing the tournaments and telling Nintendo how they feel about them and their practices.
What Will Nintendo do?
Unfortunately, this is not the first time Nintendo and the Smash Community have had this proverbial dance. Nintendo has shown that they do not care what the smash community thinks and will continue not taking it seriously even with constant public outcry. It is appalling that a AAA game like Smash Brothers can’t have a company-supported competitive scene. Never the less the Smash community has thrived over the years, even without Nintendo’s help. While Nintendo’s actions are troubling, to say the least, the community needs to continue community-driven events like low Tide City and other events like it. Smash has always had to contend with its creators. Fortunately, Smash’s longevity has never relied on Nintendo’s support or new DLC characters and lackluster patches. Instead, it is entirely on the community, a community that loves the game more than anything and wants to see it succeed.
Want to read about a new Smash Melee Weekly event? Click here!
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1 Comment
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