The it all started with the cancellation of the Big House Smash event, due to the intervention of Nintendo's lawyers, who sent a warning to the organizers. The reason? They simply wanted to use a third party client for online play.
Players have literally revolted over this decision, which is seen as outright abuse, as Nintendo does not provide any official support for Smash esports events . Hence the hashtag #FreeMelee, which also spread to other communities related to Nintendo games, including Splatoon 2.
Officially, Nintendo did not cancel the Splatoon 2 event stream due to of #FreeMelee, but appealed to technical reasons, but did not convince the community. In particular, the organizer, SlimyQuagsire, immediately linked the cancellation to the protest, underlining the importance of the tournament for the Splatoon 2 community and how it is the first time since the birth of the franchise that something like this has happened.
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The request made to Nintendo is very simple: if it wants to continue not to support the communities born around its games, at least avoid preventing them from growing independently with warnings and other legal actions.
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