Nintendo keeps treating its fans (and employees) poorly

Stop me if you have heard this one before. Nintendo fans make something cool or do something cool, often that the publisher isn’t offering at all. And then Nintendo lawyers take it out and destroy it as quickly as I eat up pizza slices at midnight. 2022 saw this happen a few more times, including Nintendo sending legal threats to someone cataloging popular soundtracks online via YouTube and going after people using custom Steam icons

It also recently caused a bit of commotion over how it handled fan-run Smash Bros. tournaments and licensing deals with these groups. This all leadto a lot of unnecessary drama that doesn’t happen with other esports games. And this is a key thing to remember: Virtually no other publisher is as litigious or weird about its IP as Nintendo is.This is a company that will send out a press release after sending a hacker to prison. Meanwhile, it’s unlikely that Microsoft will shut down a large Halo tournament. Valve isn’t shutting down fan games, in fact, they end up letting them go for sale on Steam sometimes. And most other companies just don’t bother unless things get really out of hand. It’s only Nintendo that, year after year, does such severe things against its own fans in the name of defending its trademark. As always, Nintendo lawyers need to chill

But Nintendo doesn’t just treat its longtime fans like crap, it also reportedly treats some of its employees and contractors poorly, too. This year we reported on how Nintendo contractors felt like second-class citizens, its testers who faced years of alleged sexual harassment, and how multiple labor complaints were filed against the company. The company also might have fired someone after that person asked about unions. All and all, pretty shitty behavior, and Nintendo seems to have barely addressed it or made any public plans to fix any of this stuff.