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News Nintendo releases guidelines for tournaments hosted for their games

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topics.nintendo.co.jp

ゲーム大会を計画、主催される方へ。「ゲーム大会における任天堂の著作物の利用に関するガイドライン」を公開。 | トピックス | Nintendo

任天堂のゲームを利用して、ゲーム大会の実施を希望される場合に、守っていただきたいガイドラインを掲載しました。具体的な内容に関しては、こちらのリンク先からご確認ください。ゲーム大会に
topics.nintendo.co.jp topics.nintendo.co.jp

If your Nintendo game tournament doesn't meet all of these criteria:
-Hosted by an individual rather than an organization
-Organizer makes no money from it
-Less than 300 (online)/200 (offline) entrants

Then you will have to apply with Nintendo for permission to run the tournament.

Furthermore, all tournaments must followed certain guidelines :
-No monetary prizes
-No sponsors to help cover costs for anything
-No modded consoles/games
-No unofficial servers
-All events must specify they are not affiliated with Nintendo

Alongside some more obvious guidelines, to do with respect and safety of participants.

What do you think?

EDIT: Applies to Europe too. https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Legal-information/Community-Tournament-Guidelines-2467744.html
 
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Let's hope that stays in Japan because lmao
EDIT: or maybe it's being misinterpreted since based on Japanese reactions I've seen, it's a bit positive and understanding?
 
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Ahmed said:
Lmao, that basically kills every (big) tournament out there.

Nintendo still doesn't get it.
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Nintendo gets it fine, they don't particularly need the small fighting game community (smash is a 30m+ seller, remember...) and their line of thinking appears to be that they don't want their titles tied to financial incentives in a competitive space. They're clearly thinking you can play tournaments as long as you're doing it for the enjoyment and nothing more than that.
JR436 said:
They may as well just say they're banning unofficial tournaments with those guidelines.
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They're not doing that though, they just don't want people making money out of it. Looking at the webpages, You can still charge entry fees, but at the end of the day they should only be enough to cover the costs of running the tournament and not to be actively profiting.


Still, I don't know the slightest about the Japanese legal system or how likely it is they can actually enforce any of this.
 
No unofficial servers as they are shutting down the WiiU and 3DS online next year is crazy to me.
Hopefully that doesn't extend here, I do not want to start seeing "the tournament organizers should have followed these rules" posts when Nintendo tournament prize pools are like 50 bucks of eShop credit and a pro controller.
 
Nintendo may think E-sports is harmful to their business, as their main audience is casual player. If their titles become too competitive, casual player will not want to buy it. Nintendo offical tournament also using casual rules too, sakurai even said that smash is a "party game", thats how they brand their titles.
 
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Linkstrikesback said:
Nintendo gets it fine, they don't particularly need the small fighting game community (smash is a 30m+ seller, remember...) and their line of thinking appears to be that they don't want their titles tied to financial incentives in a competitive space. They're clearly thinking you can play tournaments as long as you're doing it for the enjoyment and nothing more than that.
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I honestly think they don't.
Maybe I read it wrong, but these rules will kill anything but the smaller scenes.

It doesn't make sense to prohibit any monetization involved with organising a tournament. It's impossible to run a tournament without any money. And saying that the FGC is engaging in tournaments for something more than enjoyment is kinda insulting.

Monetary prizes of course attract more attention and engagement (and yes, there are pro players who make their living out of playing Smash and other fighting games), but if anything, the Smash competitive scene is so huge because the community loves it and enjoy the series on a competitive level. Despite Nintendo doing nothing at all to acknowledge them, and that's putting it mildly.

I'd say this is Nintendo going out of their way to hinder the competitive scene and throwing a middle finger at the community for their decades of passion and growing the scene.



Edit: you know what, ignore what I said. There is more to it than I've read. This still ruins the bigger tournaments, but they aren't prohibiting all money involved.

Edit 2: Nah, I stand by what I said. It's bad.
 
rick_C said:
Nintendo may think E-sports is harmful to their business, as their main audience is causal player. If their titles become too competitive, casual player will not want to buy it. Nintendo offical tournament also using casual rules too, sakurai even said that smash is a "party game", thats how they brand their titles.
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The Switch reveal had Splatoon 2 eSports teams in a massive stadium playing against each other. Small Battlefield was made for competitive players.
Nintendo tries to appeal to comp players, but man it doesn't feel like it 90% of the time.
 
I don't get why this of all things is the hill that Nintendo is willing to die on. I know they're a litigious company but I get the sense that all of the stuff they've been doing to stop tournaments running their games is for a different reason. Seems like they don't want to be associated with competitive gaming in general?
 
For now, this just seems like guidelines for Japan as if it was meant to be global, I assume NOA/NOE will have to release this simultaneously. NOA just helped sponsor an MK8/Smash tournament at Dreamcom a few months ago, which had the largest prize pool there.
 
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InfinityWarrior88 said:
For now, this just seems like guidelines for Japan as if it was meant to be global, I assume NOA/NOE will have release this simultaneously. NOA jusy helped sponsor an MK8/Smash tournament at Dreamcom a few months ago, which had the largest prize pool there.
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I wouldn't be surprised if NA/EU gets a similar list of guidelines soon, however I don't think it'd be as scarily restrictive as this Japanese one.
 
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So you can hold tournaments as long as you abide by guidelines… that make it extremely hard to hold said tournaments. Yeah, ooookay.
 
This feels very on brand with what Nintendo has been doing, tournament wise.

Not saying it's good, mind you, it definitely goes quite a bit against what you'd expect here. But, it does feel consistent with their previous stances.
 
No sponsors to help cover costs for anything. Jesus why?

No unofficial servers, as we close official servers.

Doesn't even matter if the whole thing is not for profit or charity based on this as there is no way to effectively raise money and host a tourney like this.

Nintendo, frick off. I don't care how casual you want to seem or how much control you want to exert. That is simply not reasonable.

Man. Look at the numbers smash tourneys got even with Nintendo's ire. Think what could have been. What a waste. There's no reason casual and competitive gaming cannot coexists. No one stopped having fun at parties with melee just because some people they never heard of shinesparked and got off a mean spike.
 
I wonder if this is a delayed fallout over the debacle with Panda last year. With Panda it seemed like Nintendo was finally supporting the competitive scene in a big way, and then shit happened.
 
I don't really follow these scenes but wasn't the case until now that every tournament needed an official license from Nintendo in order to happen, but now those who match the criteria can do it without even approval from Nintendo, while those who don't still have to get a license or whatever.
 
It doesn't make sense to allow people to charge to enter tournaments while saying that they can't make any money off of it. Do they expect tournament organizers to know exactly how much money they will spend running the event and exactly how many people attend beforehand? Just using basic logic that makes no sense, it's a completely unreasonable requirement.
 
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Linkstrikesback said:
Nintendo gets it fine, they don't particularly need the small fighting game community (smash is a 30m+ seller, remember...) and their line of thinking appears to be that they don't want their titles tied to financial incentives in a competitive space. They're clearly thinking you can play tournaments as long as you're doing it for the enjoyment and nothing more than that.


They're not doing that though, they just don't want people making money out of it. Looking at the webpages, You can still charge entry fees, but at the end of the day they should only be enough to cover the costs of running the tournament and not to be actively profiting.


Still, I don't know the slightest about the Japanese legal system or how likely it is they can actually enforce any of this.
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This is not the situation you want to defend Nintendo in, trust me.
 
legally do they have any grounds to stand on here? if everybody buys their copy then is it even considered commercial use?

obviously this all applies to Japan and I'm not familiar with the country's laws in this category but it seems a bit dystopian to me
 
Raccoon said:
legally do they have any grounds to stand on here? if everybody buys their copy then is it even considered commercial use?

obviously this all applies to Japan and I'm not familiar with the country's laws in this category but it seems a bit dystopian to me
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Japanese laws also forbids commercially renting out video games.
 
Here's a comment from one of the players on the team that'll be representing NA at the Splatoon 3 world championships:

 
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Pretty sure Japan already has the monetary prize laws. Hopefully this stays in Japan for that reason
 
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Even third party games have pretty strict rules around monetary prize pools for tournaments(in Japan), but some of the other rules are pretty bad, no sponsoring on screen alone would kill some events.
 
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Raccoon said:
legally do they have any grounds to stand on here? if everybody buys their copy then is it even considered commercial use?

obviously this all applies to Japan and I'm not familiar with the country's laws in this category but it seems a bit dystopian to me
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In this particular case everyone buying their owns copies matters naught. Commercial use is pretty broad & targets direct/indirect financial gain.
 
WestEgg said:
I’m honestly not sure community blowback has ever influenced Nintendo in anyway when it comes to tournaments.
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This, ultimately the competitive community is a niche within a niche. Nintendo could do a global ban of tournaments and as much stink as people on sites like this would make, it would have minimal impact on Nintendo. Ideally NoA/NoE don't update their policies and at worst those competitive scenes can continue to thrive.
 
I think this is lame.

"Play games together, but only the way we want you to and under strict corporate supervision" is what this tells me.
 
Lugia667 said:
Doesn't seem like many Japanese people on twitter are upset about this in the response?

Could there be a cultural divide on this issue?
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The Japanese laws around competition payouts have always placed a significant damper on the appeal of grassroots esports for both competitors and organizers, so this isn't that much of a material change. People in the West make a big scene about rules like this because there are many people whose livelihoods are based on the existence of these competitions which has never been the case in Japan. Japan simply being a smaller, denser country also plays a big role; in-person tournaments in the US are far more expensive to run and attend which means that any alterations to their scheduling and rules results in far greater costs to competitors and organizers.
 
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As someone who has ”watching Smash tournaments” as one of his biggest hobbies, this news hits so hard. It’s surreal and a major cause of alarm.
 
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Magic-Man said:
As someone who thinks that competitive gaming is ruining video games, I am completely fine with these rules. There's no need for tournaments at all, especially from a children's video game company.
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??? Yeah gaming is being ruined by people playing the game they bought against other people.

Dark Cloud said:
Lmao and some people will defend Nintendo
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This is the literal definition of anti consumer but bootlickers will bootlick
 
Iirc the money thing is nothing new,I remember past tournaments gave controllers for prizes because of this
 
RIP Nintendo esports. It was fun while it lasted. Presumably the North American update will come later today

Capping stream/vod revenue(!) at 10,000 euros per year means it will be impossible for anyone without a license to run a business in the industry.
 
Kingpin Rogers said:
Sorry, but this is an insane post. Competitive gaming is in no way ruining games.
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I don't necessarily agree with it but I'm not sure it's fair to label it so pejoratively. There are definitely some corrosive elements of competitive culture that can harm one's ability to enjoy video games, even if they only partake in them casually. I'll never forget when Overwatch patched fun out in the early offing to appease folks who cared a lot about their W/L ratio.
 
Magic-Man said:
As someone who thinks that competitive gaming is ruining video games, I am completely fine with these rules. There's no need for tournaments at all, especially from a children's video game company.
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You are under no obligation to participate! You were never affected by the tournament scene!
rick_C said:
Nintendo may think E-sports is harmful to their business, as their main audience is casual player. If their titles become too competitive, casual player will not want to buy it. Nintendo offical tournament also using casual rules too, sakurai even said that smash is a "party game", thats how they brand their titles.
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How many more copies do you think Smash Ultimate would've sold if these policies were implemented last decade?
 
BassForever said:
Rip in piece, competitive smash scene about to be in ruins
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Was already in ruins. This just is the final nail in the coffin.

At this point, expect massive retirements and moves to other games because it's now goddamn pointless to run Smash tournaments.

This basically is Nintendo saying the quiet part out loud after years of tip-toeing around it.
 
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Have you all read the European guidelines? They are relatively reasonable, and actually enforce that prizes can and will exist.

Highlights:
Organizers are allowed to make money off of ticket sales and entry fees, but those fees are limited to £20 per person, and of course, following the guidelines. Entry fees can feed into the prize pool, while ticket fees must go towards organization.

Tournaments are limited to 200 people in person, 300 online.

Prizes are allowed, but the maximum prize may not exceed £5000, with total prizes amounting to £10000 in 12 months.

No Sponsors aren't allowed.

Organizers are allowed to monetize any footage after the tournament, for up to 10,000 per year.

If anything, I really think these guidelines make grass roots organizing way easier, as most tournaments easily fall into these guidelines. This mostly discourages big tournaments such as EVO, but not small tournaments at all.

It sucks that there are regulations at all, but the European guidelines are actually semi reasonable.
 
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