Nintendo Shuts Down Collegiate Smash Ultimate League

Right as it seemed that the Sephiroth reveal might have the unfortunate side effect of offsetting the outrage caused by Nintendo's recent stifling of their games' competitive scenes, they went ahead and did it again. It was recently announced that Nintendo has shut down a collegiate Super Smash Bros. Ultimate league that was set to run during the upcoming Spring semester. This news came in the form of a tweet from St. Clair College professor and varsity esports director Shaun Byrne, which contains a screenshot of a a representative from PlayVS announcing the cancellation in a Discord server.

So this is kind of interesting. Nintendo not allowing PlayVS to run competition because they claim to be working on collegiate esports themselves?

Seems unlikely considering their complete lack of involvement in the amateur/pro level. pic.twitter.com/cJenLc6QhD

— Shaun Byrne - St. Clair (@TheEsportsProf) December 18, 2020

PlayVS is a startup focused on growing high school and collegiate esports programs, and currently organizes leagues for Fortnite, Overwatch, League of Legends, SMITE, Rocket League, Madden 21 and FIFA 21. They have raised over $106.2M and are generally considered one of the largest organizations involved in collegiate and high school esports.

The message in the screenshot also seems to indicate that Nintendo has their own plans to start their own. It is currently unknown whether or not they plan to actually make good on their promise to establish their own collegiate esports league, though considering past promises of competitive circuits and other esports initiatives that never fully materialized, this seems unlikely.

 

Oh boy. At least I'm glad we can shift discussion back to how crappy Nintendo is again lol.

 

...You've got to be kidding me.

 

FFS nintendo. Are y'all just trying to see how many lines you cross before the fans have had enough and boycott y'all permanently?

Hell I've got some coworkers who aren't even huge nintendo fans, and are pretty much as casual as you can go as a gamer, and even THEY have heard all about these stunts nintendo keeps pulling and feel like Nintendo are being the real assholes here.

 

...Right after they announced their theme park Direct? Really, Nintendo. ****ing really.

 

Are y'all just trying to see how many lines you cross before the fans have had enough and boycott y'all permanently?

It's almost just as annoying to see how many people are going to continue to defend Nintendo. This is their like 10th awful thing theyve done in the past week it seems LOL and people are still willing to catch a grenade for this stupid company.

 

I don't see the issue here. Nintendo said it had plans to host their own event nothing wrong with that.

 

The wording on that message that Nintendo was involved in the collegiate scene in the first place, which is a bit odd since the college Smash scene was previously only supported by CSL/The Melee Games.

Time will tell if Nintendo will hold their end of the bargain. I am personally somewhat optimistic here, especially since I find it odd that this specific college Smash league is targeted and not the hundreds of other ones.

Either way, this entire incident is bizarre.

 

Time will tell if Nintendo will hold their end of the bargain

Personally I don't even think they will. Even if they do, there is literally no way an "Official Nintendo Collegiate Smash League" will be at equal or greater quality than the one PlayVs had planned. Can anyone actually look back on Nintendo's previous attempts at official tournaments with positivity? They've all been online, laggy, with items, and a complete mess all around.

 

Here we go again....
On the bright side, it’s not a complete C&D to stop all future events like these entirely.

 

I absolutely knew they were going to do this. Collect all that sweet Sephiroth money and then back to the usual bull****.

 

I absolutely knew they were going to do this. Collect all that sweet Sephiroth money and then back to the usual bull****.

This isn’t as bad as the cancellation of The Big House was though. Twitter hasn’t even exploded yet!

 

Not surprised.

 

I don't see the issue here. Nintendo said it had plans to host their own event nothing wrong with that.

Oh yeah, a Nintendo Smash tournament. Can't wait to see the Smash ball in Grand Finals.

 

I don't see the issue here. Nintendo said it had plans to host their own event nothing wrong with that.

Yea man, I'd totally prefer to see items on matches on ****ing Great Cave Offensive. When are you going to stop bootlicking the company?

 

Nintendo is feeling extra salty lately

 

Nintendo is feeling extra salty lately

It’s not salt.. it’s simply just ****ty business decisions.

 

Personally I don't even think they will. Even if they do, there is literally no way an "Official Nintendo Collegiate Smash League" will be at equal or greater quality than the one PlayVs had planned. Can anyone actually look back on Nintendo's previous attempts at official tournaments with positivity? They've all been online, laggy, with items, and a complete mess all around.

Not that I approve of Nintendo's actions-I don't-but they did have some no items, legal stagelist online tournaments, and they were actually pretty well ran (at least in my own experience). Again, it's not making up for Nintendo's actions but they have run some half-decent online tournaments in the past.

 

Oh boy. At least I'm glad we can shift discussion back to how crappy Nintendo is again lol.

you got to remember why Nintendo is doing this in the first place, the answer is pedophiles in the smash community and the fall of Evo, so don't blame nintendo blame those sick ********.

 

Spring? ...so like, that would've begun sometime in March, right? That's pretty far from now! That's strange...

 

Spring? ...so like, that would've begun sometime in March, right? That's pretty far from now! That's strange...

It's for college as in it starts after winter break

 

I can't say that it hasn't been fun watching people go from "They're just against piracy!" to "It's the community's fault that Nintendo is doing this!", but yeah this should be a worrisome trend. Corporate cuckoldry has run amok in today's consumer market, and Nintendo consumers are especially bad about it, so it's no surprise that they are feeling brazen enough to do this.

While I can sympathize with the desire to distant oneself from the troublemakers in the competitive community; it's kind of amazing how easily Nintendo has transitioned into shutting down projects that it isn't even affiliated with. What they're doing is shutting down any sort of gathering of people who bought and own those games and Switches. Like, theoretically if you wanted to orchestrate a Smash party or a local tournament then you could be potentially shutdown by Nintendo if they for some reason decided to do so.

And the fact that everyone decided that was ok is pretty amazing as well. Imagine if we saw this kind of stuff in the early days of the FGC or even Melee. You wouldn't even have a fighting game community. The concept of playing a fighting game would basically be relegated to playing your friends or the cpu.

It just frankly amazes me that you can have an independently run organization, of which is self-funded through donations and the sales of third-party vendors, and still be subject to the whims of a corporation. IP law is truly broken and dumb and needs to be abolished ASAP. So much good will happen in such a short amount of time that people will be confused as to why it was defended in the first place.

 

I can't say that it hasn't been fun watching people go from "They're just against piracy!" to "It's the community's fault that Nintendo is doing this!", but yeah this should be a worrisome trend. Corporate cuckoldry has run amok in today's consumer market, and Nintendo consumers are especially bad about it, so it's no surprise that they are feeling brazen enough to do this.

While I can sympathize with the desire to distant oneself from the troublemakers in the competitive community; it's kind of amazing how easily Nintendo has transitioned into shutting down projects that it isn't even affiliated with. What they're doing is shutting down any sort of gathering of people who bought and own those games and Switches. Like, theoretically if you wanted to orchestrate a Smash party or a local tournament then you could be potentially shutdown by Nintendo if they for some reason decided to do so.

And the fact that everyone decided that was ok is pretty amazing as well. Imagine if we saw this kind of stuff in the early days of the FGC or even Melee. You wouldn't even have a fighting game community. The concept of playing a fighting game would basically be relegated to playing your friends or the cpu.

It just frankly amazes me that you can have an independently run organization, of which is self-funded through donations and the sales of third-party vendors, and still be subject to the whims of a corporation. IP law is truly broken and dumb and needs to be abolished ASAP. So much good will happen in such a short amount of time that people will be confused as to why it was defended in the first place.

It's called capitalism, I don't live in a capitalist country, so I have no idea how it works.

 

you got to remember why Nintendo is doing this in the first place, the answer is pedophiles in the smash community and the fall of Evo, so don't blame nintendo blame those sick ********.

Thats.... not even remotely close to the reason why.

Nintendo has always been anti competition, and against other people forming competitive communities from smash. Throwing the blame for all of Nintendo's wrongdoings on the community's effort to expose predators is just straight up wrong.

 

Thats.... not even remotely close to the reason why.

Nintendo has always been anti competition, and against other people forming competitive communities from smash. Throwing the blame for all of Nintendo's wrongdoings on the community's effort to expose predators is just straight up wrong.

So, #FreeMelee?

 

#FundMelee
#SupportSmash

That's what I believe in anyway.

 

#FundMelee
#SupportSmash

That's what I believe in anyway.

Now spam those on Twitter while also saying "**** Nintendo" over and over again.

 

Now spam those on Twitter while also saying "**** Nintendo" over and over again.

No, I don't think I will.
There are a variety of reasons I made my own hashtags instead of using the other ones, and that kind of attitude and vitriol is one of those reasons.

 

Now spam those on Twitter while also saying "**** Nintendo" over and over again.

I get it can be annoying to see it spammed but you have to understand this is really not normal for a company to be this aggressive in shutting down its own supporters. You don't hear stories about Xbox shutting down Halo tournaments, Valve banning mods from being publicized, or Riot not allowing streaming League events. None of that happens because they are companies that actually care about and support the competitive scene! Smash players have been trying so long to get Nintendo to support that at this point were just asking them to leave us alone.

 

I get it can be annoying to see it spammed but you have to understand this is really not normal for a company to be this aggressive in shutting down its own supporters. You don't hear stories about Xbox shutting down Halo tournaments, Valve banning mods from being publicized, or Riot not allowing streaming League events. None of that happens because they are companies that actually care about and support the competitive scene! Smash players have been trying so long to get Nintendo to support that at this point were just asking them to leave us alone.

What are you waiting for? Scream "**** Nintendo"on Twitter!

 

There has to be something to this, right?
Nintendo wouldn't shut down a SSBU tournament that has no relation to emulation if they weren't planning to profit off of a Smash tournament themselves. There's no other reason why they'd do this otherwise unless they want to get their name off of anything competitive Smash due to the allegations against many competitive players. It's at least better to be some-what optimistic instead of anchoring your opinion that it's a complete lie.

 

There has to be something to this, right?
Nintendo wouldn't shut down a SSBU tournament that has no relation to emulation if they weren't planning to profit off of a Smash tournament themselves. There's no other reason why they'd do this otherwise unless they want to get their name off of anything competitive Smash due to the allegations against many competitive players. It's at least better to be some-what optimistic instead of anchoring your opinion that it's a complete lie.

They said within the announcement that Nintendo claimed that they were working on collegiate Esports themselves, which was the reason PlayVS was told to back off in the first place. In other words, they have something planned for collegiate Esports themselves.

I am personally inclined to believe them, because it literally makes no sense why they would do this otherwise.

 

On one hand, I doubt whoever within Nintendo made the statement would outright lie about looking into their own version of a Smash league.

On the other...Nintendo also has a habit of getting cold feet about esports-related stuff and backing out halfway through.

This is one more thing of several lately that comes off as someone in the chain of command acting out of anxiety. I think they're afraid of what might happen if they loosen their control over their IP only for something to happen beyond their control that ruins their reputation.

That said, an anxious person can be reached, so I do think something good can come of all of this if we contact the right people without treating them as outright enemies. But it won't be easy.

 

This is just a bummer I have my fingers crossed that nintendo actually comes through for us, but I'm not too hopeful given their track record recently. I'm about to transfer schools and I was hoping to be able to try to join a collegiate league ://

 

This is just a bummer I have my fingers crossed that nintendo actually comes through for us, but I'm not too hopeful given their track record recently. I'm about to transfer schools and I was hoping to be able to try to join a collegiate league ://

Don't worry, they didn't C&D it, so it's still possible to join a collegiate league.

 

Don't worry, they didn't C&D it, so it's still possible to join a collegiate league.

Oh sweet! Thanks for the info!

 

It’s not salt.. it’s simply just ****ty business decisions.

Hence the salt

 

Yea man, I'd totally prefer to see items on matches on ****ing Great Cave Offensive. When are you going to stop bootlicking the company?

That's kinda unnecessary. They weren't bootlicking, just saying that everyone seemed to be blowing it out of proportion. You're being a bit harsh on their opinion here.

 

Yea man, I'd totally prefer to see items on matches on ****ing Great Cave Offensive. When are you going to stop bootlicking the company?

The Great Cave Offensive isn't actually that bad.

 

I guess if Nintendo gave the colleges a C&D, we'd be complaining a lot more.