you know with all the bullshit nintendo pulls when it comes to smash tournaments, even down to trying to limit how many entrants can actually go to a tournament, i think TOs should just start calling nintendo out on their BS.

think about it. nintendo is far overreaching their legal power. saying you can't have more than 200 people gather in a place to play a video game without their permission is going against the right to assemble. there are other things too but that's just one example i'll focus on.

say someone runs a tournament with 250 people without getting nintendo's permission. nintendo sends them a cease and desist since they broke their arbitrary rule.

if the TO doesn't comply and runs the tournament anyway, what happens? nintendo sues this TO? no fucking way would they do that, there's no way they could get away with it. they want to hang the threat over their head, but they would never actually take someone to court over that.

the reason they wouldn't is because it would set a legal precedent. none of what nintendo requires for people running tournaments of their game has any legal precedent, they just flex their power to completely ruin you financially if they want to. but i don't think they ever would.

with gary bowser the situation was a bit different. he was literally selling access to pirated games and had bricked nintendo consoles with unauthorized code. nintendo could take him to court and actually win the case because we all know it's illegal to pirate games.

is it illegal to run a tournament for a video game without following the company's GUIDELINES for how they want their game to be played? well, probably not, but we don't know for sure. we know that modding a video game in the US isn't illegal. it might go against TOS so you'll get banned or something but it isn't illegal. we know that running games on emulators isn't illegal, so something like Slippi has every right to exist. but we have no idea if tournaments can be formed around those concepts either. absolutely no clue.

my gut tells me that if it were to actually go to court, the court would find that nintendo's guidelines do not have to be followed for people to organize and play a game, even for money, even with sponsors and all that jazz. nintendo has no obligation to support them in any way, but the tournament can happen.

at that point, the flood gates are open. nintendo no longer has any power. the only downside is that whoever goes in a legal battle against nintendo, even if they win, is going to be broke for a while. the community would really need to step up and make it a big endeavor.

i think that, even if nintendo WON a case like this, then there would still be a precedent set that people would understand by the letter of the law and be able to find other ways around. nintendo won't do shit because they don't want a legal precedent. they just come out of hiding every year or so to strike down a massive tournament and then for the next little while everything is fine and people can do whatever they want. it's the fear aspect, they want people to fear them.