Nintendo to ban streaming of Super Smash Bros. Melee at EVO

http://shoryuken.com/2013/07/09/changes-to-evo-2013-smash-schedule/

Not sure where to post this, let it go here for now.

So EVO is the world's biggest fighting game tournament, and this year fans donating close to $100,000 in order to see SSBM as part of its line-up. However, in a continuation of Ninty's "Nah, no Let's Plays please" policy, they're banning any streaming of SSBM at the tournament, effectively nullifying any point of SSBM being at EVO. SSBM has been adopted by the community as a competitive platform, where's the sense in discouraging that? Does banning the game from being streamed at EVO make any business sense?

Whilst I can understand Nintendo not wanting people getting ad revenue from Let's Plays (even if I don't agree with it), I just don't see any reason for this. Streaming SSBM is free publicity for Smash Bros. 4. EVO is watched world-wide, and people were hyped to see Smash at this year's EVO. It's a real kick in the teeth to these fans who raised all that money for charity in order to get Smash to EVO, and shows Nintendo still is backwards in regards to online communities. Microsoft, Sony, Valve, all these guys have partnerships with Twitch.tv and encourage streaming, Sony even going as far to include a share button on the damn controller.

Unimpressed.

Oh good, a genuine use for the most trollish emoticon of them all:  

I understand that Nintendo have gone back on that decision, according to this. Sense seen! Nintendo really could be doing less of this stupid crap.

U-turns are all the rage these days!

They should start calling them n-turns.

Balladeer wrote:

U-turns are all the rage these days!

I'm surprised it took this long for the big companies to start realising the benefits of the move.

Good. Still, terrible business practice by Ninty - doing themselves no favours.

This current over-zealous legal-wrangling is a bit of a concern. If you go back ten years, Nintendo were really stiff and litigious - NGamer (or possibly NGC) did a piece on Nintendo's 25 worst decisions, and most of them were heavy-handed censoring. But five years ago they'd become much more open, which seemed to be a result of people like Iwata at the top; he said that he didn't think it was right for Nintendo to act against something that someone had created out of love for their product. But they appear to be becoming jerks again.

Nintendo fans have always been the nicest gaming fans - people that love Nintendo REALLY love Nintendo. But it's becoming harder and harder if Nintendo acts out against their friends with shit like this.

Without knowing the individual person who did this it's perhaps not fair to give Nintendo as an entity too much hassle- yes, this could have been an Evil Iwata (or "Iwario", as I'm going to call him) call from on high, but then it might have been the over-eager new kid in legal not engaging their brain.

That's fair also - and the quick backpeddling seems to suggest you're probably right - but still did them no favours as an entity.

They set a bad precedent earlier this year with their stunt regarding Lets Plays really. And I still don't get why they did either that or the Lets Plays, out of all the game companies around Nintendo stand to lose the absolute least from Lets Plays and streams like Evo because they make games entirely around the gameplay rather than the story.

I just think it's strange Nintendo are doing this rather than Microsoft or Sony, they seem much more likely to do it and their games areb the types of games that are actually devalued because of streaming.

Probably shouldn't double post but an edit just ain't going to get people in here. Since this thread exists I'm guessing there might be an interest in this, the finals series for Smash is on right now. http://www.twitch.tv/team/evo

Seriously awesome stuff going on, and the characters in use are also very nice and diverse, only a couple of Foxes and so on.

I missed it, but apparently it broke records. Silly Nintendo Legal!

Yeah, the stream had over 120'000 people watching it by the end if I recall correctly. And the play on show was truly fantastic as well. Hopefully Nintendo have learned their lesson from this and never ban it again, this game is over 12 years old and it was pulling in more views than King of Fighters just before it.

Shows what year can do, with Nintendo now sponsor.