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Nintendo tells Smash World Tour that it can no longer play unlicensed tournaments

Nintendo tells Smash World Tour that it can no longer play unlicensed tournaments
Zoom in / A huge mural of Smash Bros. from a trade show.

Major organizers Super Smash Bros. The tournament series, The Smash World Tour, says Nintendo denied its application for an official license, cutting off months of negotiations “without any warning.” The decision led to the cancellation of next year’s season and next month’s 2022 Smash World Tour tournament, though Nintendo now says it has “not requested” any changes for the tournament. Either way, it’s an abrupt end to a massive tour that drew 325,000 attendees across thousands of events in 2022, according to the organizers.

Smash World Tour organizers said at Long open letter Detailed factors that led to the cancellation. “However, in the way the past few weeks have gone, we are very concerned that all of this progress has suddenly been reversed.”

Negotiations stumbled

as we are discussed in the pastUS copyright law gives Nintendo the right to stop playing anything and everything Smash Bros. Tournaments that are described as “public offerings” of one of the Company’s games. Nintendo has it Exercise this right a few times In the past, usually to close courses that used “unauthorized” rule modifications Smash Bros. Toys.

Last November, though, Nintendo ushered in a new era of official tournament approval, declaring Panda Global” as the first officially licensed Super Smash Bros. Championship circuit in North America. In their open letter, the Smash World Tour organizers said they originally assumed the move would lead to the cancellation of the planned 2021 tournament. Instead, they said Nintendo told them the Panda license was non-exclusive and began working on officially licensing the Smash World Tour as well.

While licensing discussions continued into early 2022, organizers say the 2022 Smash World Tour was launched without an official license, in part because “we didn’t have the full scope of our proposal sorted out with Nintendo beforehand.” But organizers said they sought a license for the December tournament, and submitted an application in April.

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Meanwhile, SmashTour organizers say the CEO of Panda Global has begun trying to undermine their tour by “telling[ing] The organizers are definitely not back in 2022 and if we did we would be closed shortly after the announcement. After Panda Global initially claimed exclusivity for any associated individual events, several tournaments were jointly run as part of both the licensed Panda Cup and the unlicensed Smash World Tour in 2022 (Panda Global did not respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica).

new era

four people?  This is a public offer.  Shut up the boys!

four people? This is a public offer. Shut up the boys!

After months of silence from Nintendo, Smash World Tour organizers said they were able to get together again with the cast in September and again in November. Then, last Wednesday, they said Nintendo told them in no uncertain terms that they wouldn’t get a commercial license and that the days of Nintendo forgiving being played without it “are now over.”

in the current situation Submitted to Kotaku Late Tuesday, Nintendo said that despite “ongoing conversations” and “deep thinking,” the company “has been unable to come to an agreement with SWT to come full circle in 2023.” However, Nintendo maintains that it “has not requested any changes or cancellations for the remaining events in 2022, including the 2022 Championship event, given the negative impact on players who were already planning to participate.”

in Follow-up statementSmash World Tour, though, cites a written statement from Nintendo saying that tournaments are “expected to acquire such a license well in advance of any public announcement” and that the company “will not be able to license a Smash World Tour Championship 2022 or Any Smash World Tour activity in 2023.”

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Over the past few months, Smash World Tour organizers have said they believe Nintendo is making progress in emulating other game makers’ “accessible and transparent” guidelines for licensing tournaments. But they say the company has now “returned to extreme secrecy, with no clear guidelines, and a willingness to suddenly shut down community efforts even after giving many indications that it won’t happen.”

This news comes just weeks after Nintendo used a DMCA request for Remove fan made Steam Icons for some emulated Switch games From a popular online clearinghouse. And over the years, Nintendo has used copyright to stop everything fan games to me Modern game and watch hacking videos to me Mario themed Maine Craft videos.

“In a world of corporations that work ruthlessly to control their own narrative at the expense of research and reference, Nintendo ranks up there with Monsanto, the coal companies, and the mob,” Jason Scott of the Internet Archive He told Ars back in 2018. “You expect feelings when people talk about old video games, but fear shouldn’t be one of them.”