The Splatoon 2 North American Open December 2020 is taking place this weekend and Nintendo intended to host an official live stream for the finals tomorrow but that will no longer be happening. The reason is fallout from the situation where The Big House, a prominent tournament, was forced to scrap its online Smash Melee tournament following a cease desist from Nintendo., who said the tournament would have required “use of illegally copied versions of the game” and a mod known as Slippi.
Because of this, fans weren’t happy and the #FreeMelee campaign was started that took off on social media. People had planned to continue during this weekend’s Splatoon 2 tournament and even include a number of players and teams featuring the tag.
Kind of funny that they'll sever their own "support" that they love to parade around as something so fantastic, just because the Splatoon community wanted to stand in solidarity with the other scenes that Nintendo outright harms.#freemelee #savesmash pic.twitter.com/3F77b19pDE
— Level1 | Slimy (@SlimyQuagsire) December 5, 2020
The tournament finals will still take place as planned, but there are no plans to bring the live stream back.