Time to add another post to the “Nintendo does not understand the internet” category: Nintendo of America has told the organizers of the upcoming Evo 2013 fighting game tournament that are not allowed to air any footage of Super Smash Bros. Melee on their livestream.
While a Smash Bros. Melee tournament will still be held at the event, the tournament will no longer be streamed online; if you want to watch it, you’ll have to be at Evo in person. The Evo stream will instead show footage from the Persona 4: Arena tournament instead.
Super Smash Bros. Melee was added to the Evo line-up following a charity fund-raising contest. Fans of the game donated over $90,000 to breast cancer research in order to secure a spot for Smash Bros. on the Evo 2013 schedule, beating out games like Skullgirls and Street Fighter 2 Turbo.
This is the second time this year that Nintendo has tried to limit online broadcasts of their games: earlier this year, Nintendo began to claim all ad revenue generated from user uploaded footage of their games on YouTube.
With the upcoming release of a brand new Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS, you’d think that Nintendo would want to build some goodwill with the fighting community, but as always, it seems like Nintendo doesn’t quite understand how these things are supposed to work. Having Smash Bros. at Evo is the perfect way to promote the series, and by denying the tournament streaming rights to the game, they’re only hurting their most hardcore fans and themselves.
The Evo 2013 tournament begins this Friday and runs all weekend, and will feature tournaments for Street Fighter IV, Mortal Kombat, Injustice: Gods Among Us, The King of Fighters 13, and several other games. Smash Bros. will be the only game at the event that won’t be broadcast online.
UPDATE — Several people involved with Evo management are now tweeting that Nintendo has finally granted them streaming rights to Smash Bros. That was quick. This never should have been an issue in the first place, but hey, at least we know they’re listening now, right?
Source: Shoryuken
