Nintendo Releases Strict New Community Tournament Guidelines, Sparking Criticism

Nintendo has released a new set of Community Tournament Guidelines for small scale community-run tournaments using their games.

The new set of guidelines can be found here, and will come into effect starting from November 15th 2023. Although a lot of it is standard fare, the new guidelines have come under fire from many tournament organizers and fans, as they come across as overly restrictive and likely to make it very difficult to actually run community tournaments moving forward.

The list of guidelines runs extremely long, but some of the more specific areas which have been criticized are as follows:

• Strict limit on the number of participants (200 for in-person, 300 for online)
• Caps on spectator and entry ticket fees, which cannot exceed the amount needed to organise the tournament or provide prize money
• Restrictions on the value of tournament prizes and what fees collected can be used for it
• No Third-Party Sponsorships
• No sale of Food and Drink in venues with Spectators
• No use of the game’s name in the Tournament title (e.g. Splatoon 3, Super Smash Bros.)

Nintendo has historically had a rocky relationship with the competitive scene for their games, and these new regulations seem likely to strain these relationships even further unless they are adjusted. Stay tuned for more updates as they come.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.