- The popular streamer recently announced he had some legal trouble with the gaming company
- He explained it was in regards to him hosting The Ludwig Ahgren Championship Series
- According to Ludwig, Nintendo did not like he wanted to modify the Pokémon Stadium level
In the wake of Nintendo announcing new guidelines for hosting community tournaments on their games, popular online content Ludwig announced he had legal trouble with the company.
Ludwig Talks About the Situation
Popular YouTuber and streamer Ludwig has been well-known for his love of the Super Smash Bros. franchise as a lot of his content revolves around it. He is even the co-owner of Moist Esports, an organization fielding a few teams in other titles, as well as currently hosting six Smash players from North America.
The popular online personality is also known for hosting various Smash events, such as The Ludwig Ahgren Championship Series which took place in July of 2023. Unfortunately, it seems that this exact event has landed him in some legal trouble with Nintendo.
In a recent video, aptly titled “I got sued by Nintendo”, the YouTuber shared his unfortunate experience with the company. “Hi, I’m Ludwig and I got sued by Nintendo. It actually happened a few months ago, but I feel like it’s worth bringing up now because of some huge drama and updates that have come out of the Smash scene,” Ludwig started his video.
He then went on to claim that Nintendo had issued him a “Notice of Infringement of Intellectual Property,” for his Super Smash Bros. tournament: “The Ludwig Ahgren Championship Series,” in July. According to Ludwig, the notice was a “baby cease and desist”, which he explained meant that he had to “stop” running Smash tournaments if Nintendo’s rules were not followed.
What Was Nintendo’s Reasoning?
According to the content creator, the company took this legal action because Ludwig wanted to modify the Pokemon Stadium level in the game to make it more competitive by freezing moving parts known as transformations. Nintendo is notorious for being quite protective of their products so they may have seen the modification as a breach of the integrity of the game.
Ludwig’s news comes in the wake of Nintendo announcing new guidelines for community tournaments. According to the new rulings, organizers of such events may not modify the game played in any way and must use Nintendo’s online services, if such are required for the game.
“Nintendo is like, ‘Hey, we don’t like when you modify our game. Please don’t modify our game’,” Ludwig explained. “So, I didn’t. I didn’t do that. And instead, we left the transformations on… It was basically, less luck involved because some stages and transformations are good for other characters and not so good for other characters.”
The content creator then went on to talk about how currently, tournaments bigger than community ones must have a special license from Nintendo and said he will also have to acquire one if he wants to continue hosting such events. Ludwig did, however, praise Nintendo for the speed at which they are giving out licenses, at least in Japan, and gave a couple of examples.
However, the streamer’s situation is still in somewhat of a state of limbo and at the time of writing of this article, he has not revealed what the definite conclusion of the matter is.
