These are particularly hot hours for the Super Smash Bros. community, highly acclaimed Nintendo franchise that has been thrilling fighting game players for years.

The latest, striking episode has questioned the kind of control that the Kyoto giant applies to its intellectual properties: the biggest American Smash tournament had to cancel its next ev I go online on Nintendo’s ‘kind’ request.

Nintendo: an overprotective mom? The Big House case

The clash between Nintendo and the Smash Bros. community took place a few days before the new tournament organized by The Big House, active since 2011 in the organization of celebratory events and competitions dedicated to franchise of the Grande N.

In particular, for the next event the association would have required the use of some ‘pirated’ copies of Super Smash Bros. Melee, title released on GameCube in 2001, as well as the adoption of a tool (Slippi) that would allow players to compete online.

This type of organization was not appreciated by Nintendo, which intervened by requesting the collaboration of the organizers of The Big House in order to stop the all. The tournament staff refused to cooperate, forcing the Japanese company to take legal action with the aim of protecting its intellectual property.

Slippi becomes necessary due to the fact that Nintendo itself has decided to abandon support for the old Super Smash Bros. Melee, effectively preventing online play. The same happened with Melee’s sequels, namely Brawl and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U : with ‘introduction of the new generation of consoles, in fact, Nintendo has abandoned its fighting games for the previous consoles.

Melee however is a very iconic game and its community has remained intact, moving to PC via a emulator which allowed to play online. Even more recently a programmer, known to the community as @ fizz 36 , developed Slippi via a rollback of the original netcode, much more functional than that emulator. In other words, Slippi is today the only way to organize a Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament. Due to the pandemic, in fact, it is not possible to carry out the tournament in attendance and online support is necessarily required as only Slippi can offer in this context.

According to official statements released by the company, Nintendo “appreciates the love and dedication that fighting game community has for Super Smash Bros. Unfortunately, the upcoming Big House tournament has announced plans to organize a Super Smash Bros. Melee online tournament that requires the use of illegal copies of the game, along with a mod called Slippi, during their competition “. The company then concluded by stating that “cannot forgive or allow piracy” how much its games are involved.

The answer of The Big House was not long in coming, but leaves no room for good news.

The organizers declare themselves “embittered” for the decision made by Nintendo and they can do nothing but respect the publisher’s requests: “We have been be informed that we are not allowed to host or broadcast the event, primarily due to causation a of the use of Sippi. Unfortunately, all of our competitions will suffer. We are forced to comply with (Nintendo’s) order and cancel The Big House Online for Melee and Ultimate. Refund details will be sent shortly “.

The reaction of the fans: the hashtag #SaveSmash is popular

The most passionate gamers of the Nintendo franchise have decided to support the team of The Big House , starting a cycle of protests and complaints addressed to the same producer to whom they owe the creation of the fighting game. so the hashtag # FreeMelee .

– UYU 丨 n0ne (@ n0ned) November 24, 2020

After conquering the Trending category of Twitter , the hashtag has recently evolved to # SaveSmash , co reading thousands of tweets until it also went viral.

The Big House tournament would be held online from December 4th to 6th 2020. Nintendo has made no further statements regarding the recent protests on social media.