NINTENDO ACTS TO PREVENT ONLINE MELEE TOURNAMENT

The Super Smash Bros tournament scene has long had a strained relationship with Nintendo, and a new dispute has erupted over the annual tournament The Big House. The traditional event had been cancelled in July due to the ongoing pandemic situation, but an online tournament was then scheduled for December 2020.

In order to host the perennially popular Super Smash Bros Melee online, the organisers were planning to use the Dolphin emulator with the Slippi mod for rollback netcode. Nintendo has always taken a dim view of unauthorised emulation and anything that resembles piracy, and unsurprisingly sent a cease and desist letter. The entire event, including the perfectly legal Super Smash Bros Ultimate tournament, was cancelled as a result. Players quickly responded with a #FreeSmash campaign online in an attempt to reverse the decision, but Nintendo has been unmoved. Player pressure did successfully reverse the company’s attempts to prevent the live streaming of a Super Smash Bros Melee tournament at Evo 2013, but that was an event that used real hardware and raised money for charity – Nintendo will see this as a simple issue of stopping piracy. Maybe the company should consider a modern port with online play? It could solve many problems.