By that I just mean all the hate EA was receiving a couple years ago for everything they were doing with micropayments and lootboxes, eventually a law being created around not allowing lootboxes in these systems as it's all gambling in the end. People were raging about how they took advantage of their player not by just milking them for their last cents but also turning them into gamblers and the spectrum of issues that causes.
Nintendo has recently been causing a lot of controversy to their playerbase as well, not for the same issue with the lootboxes but for other motives I can't really seem to understand fully though I imagine it all boils down to greed which is usually the primary motive.
A week ago there was a tournament for super smash brothers called The Big House that many viewers and competitive players had been looking forward to. Naturally with everything that's been going on this year and having to host this tournament remotely due to the pandemic this meant the players were all going to be participating in the tournament from home. To make this remote tournament easier The Big House was using a mod called Slippi which Nintendo had a big problem with and pulled a cease and desist on the tournament, effectively cancelling it and leaving thousands of players and fans disappointed. Afterwards they started targeting youtubers who used this mod and other various emulators as well by demonetizing their content and forcing them to take it down.
This is where it only begins, unfortunately.
Remember last year when Blizzard hosted a Hearthstone tournament? Feels like a decade ago cause there's been so much shit happening this year and it almost feels like most people have forgotten about what was happening with Hong Kong, but there a HS player showed his support to #freehongkong in the tournament stream and was promptly disqualified from the tournament. This of course caused a lot of controversy, many pointing out to Blizzard having been bought up by TenCent and thus taking these actions. The blockchain based game Gods Unchained got a lot of free publicity when they tweeted that such actions would never occur on games that use the blockchain as a way to trustlessly host their ingame items, referring to Blizzard suspending his account and prize money of the tournament.
What happened with Nintendo recently was kind of similar, there was another tournament on the horizon called Splatoon 2 which Nintendo were hosting themselves. When you hear of tournaments being hosted by the original companies that have literally created the game, you often expect some big prizes to be won. Riot for instance hosted a League of Legends tournament this one time with the prize pool being $1 Million, and Valve hosted a Dota 2 tournament at some point that was said to be bigger than that but I can't remember how much exactly right now. Yes, this is prize money to players playing a computer game in front of computers and a live audience with commentators and millions of viewers online - for you boombers who lost me in that sentence. How much did Nintendo offer for the Splatoon 2 tourney? $25!!! Yep, 25, no not millions, just 25 bucks and no, not even bucks actually but in store credit oh and the last team that won this kind of tourney didn't even receive their in store credit. You literally can't make this shit up, and guess what happened next. Nintendo went ahead and cancelled it because a few teams were sporting the username #freemelee in regards to the smash bros tournament incident mentioned above. How petty is that?
The weird thing is that Nintendo don't seem to give a single fuck about the PR this is causing, almost makes you feel like they're so big they don't even care. Which literally begs the question as to why they're taking these controversial steps.
For anyone that's not stuck in the 90's you'd realize that tournaments occurring, whether each player was using 100% genuine Nintendo merchandise or not still ends up being a net positive for their sales and marketing with the tournament, streams and publicity it gathers. Viewers see how much fun these tournaments are, or the games, or the community and may decide to go and buy Nintendo games and consoles themselves, especially during Covid with so many being forced inside. Suspending the tournament due to some mods or emulators, from players that definitely have the real consoles but are only using these "hacks" to make it easier to play remotely is beyond absurd.
They've been on a real roll here in just one week, it's literally like they're trying to one up covid in their own sector, meaning the gaming community or specifically their own gaming community that supports them by playing their games and buying their merchandise. There was someone who was creating a custom joystick for the Nintendo Switch recently, he had been fundraising it in memory of the streamer and entertainer Etika who lost his life recently and suffered from depression and bipolar. All profits generated from this joystick would go towards charity until, yep you may have guessed it, cease and desist by Nintendo.
What's even funnier is that their own Joy-con in the Nintendo Switch has been super defective and consumers are looking at Nintendo to find a solution to replace them
Oh man, I honestly don't know what's going on with them, it feels like they're either trying to become the next Atari (or Atari hopefully taking their place and turning my investment in their coin profitable ;)) or they just know they're way too big to fail due to all the IP they have hence literally don't give a single fuck about their customers.
Anyway had to write about this cause it seems to not be a bigger deal than it should be and people need to know what's going on, excited to find out how this continues from here on out.
PS! Here's the banner for this post that I mspainted myself cause at this point they may send me a c&d for that too.
