Frustration are ramping up from fans in the past week due to Nintendo’s decision to put a stop to a Super Smash Bro. Melee competitive tournament.
Some preface
Nintendo send a cease and desist order to The Big House, the longest-running Smash tournament in the US just the other week.
The reason for this was because Nintendo refused to support a tournament that saw illegally copied version of the game being used for the event.
The news quickly gained traction online with the hashtags #SaveSmash and #FreeMelee trending worldwide. Nintendo even went out of the way to release a statement to Polygon explaining the reason behind it while highlighting the fact that The Big House did not cooperate.
Livestream cancelled
Nintendo cancelled the livestream for the Splatoon 2 North American Open which was scheduled to take place over last weekend.
SlimyQuagsire shared a statement from Splatoon 2’s official tournament Discord server;
Kind of funny that they'll sever their own "support" that they love to parade around as something so fantastic, just because the Splatoon community wanted to stand in solidarity with the other scenes that Nintendo outright harms.#freemelee #savesmash pic.twitter.com/3F77b19pDE
— Slimy (@SlimyQuagsire) December 5, 2020
Speculation behind the cancellation of the livestream points towards the names of the winning teams that were submitted for the tournament; many of who chose Melee-inspired names for their teams.
Nintendo states the livestream was cancelled due to “unexpected executional challenged”, but many fans think otherwise. Keep in mind though the livestream may have been cancelled, thankfully, the tournament has gone ahead as planned.
But do you think this was Nintendo censoring the Smash support? We kinda think so ourselves
