A new set of Nintendo Community Tournament Guidelines has threatened aspects of the competitive Super Smash Bros. community that don’t fall in line with certain rules, including the popular Coinbox series hosted by Team Liquid and Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma. And, even with some of the event limitations looking like they target Coinbox’s Melee operations, Hbox isn’t backing down until Nintendo approaches him directly.
There are several areas of the new Nintendo guidelines that will impact Smash events, but three specifically stand out as impactful to what Hbox does with Coinbox.
Nintendo has dictated any unlicensed tournament, which is considered a “small-scale” event, can’t have more than 300 online participants, feature sponsors, or use “unauthorized software or tools.” All three of these directly target Coinbox which frequently features tournaments with more than 300 players, has Coinbase as a title sponsor in partnership with Liquid, and can only operate its Melee brackets with the use of third-party services like Slippi.
If and when these changes go into effect on Nov. 15 and for events starting in 2024, Melee Coinbox events will be actively working in opposition to Nintendo’s updated guidelines. Hbox doesn’t seem to mind, however, as he is calling the company’s bluff—at least initially.
“I’m running Coinbox,” Hbox said. “I’m gonna keep running it January. I’m going to keep running it in February, and March, and April. I will run it every fucking week until I receive word from them [Nintendo] directly. I’m not going to stop out of fear. They have to come to me, directly, with a document. Until then, I’m calling their bluff.”
This is the same stance Hbox has had on Nintendo cracking down on his online tournaments or Melee events in general for years, including last year when Panda Cup tanked due to various behind-the-scenes issues and fan backlash.
Coinbox has been providing consistent, essentially weekly tournaments for the Smash scene since it started as the Juice Box all the way back in June 2020, before rebranding last February. It has featured multiple online brackets with more than 1,000 players competing and has been offering $3,000 prize pools each week for most of this year.
As the narrative around this new set of Nintendo guidelines continues to expands, Hbox does not plan on letting Coinbox die, but he also acknowledges his “run my events until I get a fucking knock banging on my door” mentality can only go so far.
In a follow-up post, he isn’t calling this the end of competitive Smash, but Melee Coinbox will be shut down if Nintendo does contact him since he views a middle-ground approach with the company toward Slippi events as “unlikely.”
“‘It’s better to have the devs on your side than against you’ is a statement I heard multiple times today,” Hbox said on Twitter. “While the above is obviously true, it has to work for both sides. Some sacrifices aren’t worth.”
Nintendo did confirm in its North American version of the Smash tournament guidelines that the application for official licenses will be available in early November. Whether this will include further transparency on areas of concern such as timelines for license turnaround or limitations for merchandise or food sales is still unknown.
