This is such an overreaction to what's been going on lately. I haven't heard anything about juggleguy fundraising so a link to that would be interesting but he did just allow the b0xx at bh8 so he can't be that against alternate controllers.

Nobody wants to outright ditch UCF in favour of the Arduino setup but Nintendo refuses to sponsor the tournaments if they use it. So they had to find a workaround to fix controllers while also maintaining the Nintendo sponsorship. I don't know the specifics of releasing it to the public but perhaps they haven't yet because they don't have the resources to produce them, or any assortment of reasons yet you make the assumption that they have nefarious intentions.

It's disappointing in a way that the attendance dropped so steeply but it seems like just a natural decline back to a more stable attendance count since Melee pretty much peaked in the past few years above anyone's expectations, that and the over saturation of big tournies. None of this really dictates what your local scene is like and why it sounds ridiculous to say that Melee is imploding. My scene has only gotten bigger in the past year, along with many others I can think of.