The saying “New Year, new me” doesn’t seem to apply to Nintendo as the massive games publisher continues to issue DMCA takedowns against fan-made content, this time resulting in the removal of hundreds of fan-made games from popular hosting website Game Jolt. While Nintendo has resided in headlines due to its recent influx of content takedowns, the actions taken against Game Jolt have resulted in the worst DMCA takedown yet.

The final months of 2020 were filled with disappointing decisions made by Nintendo. It started with Nintendo issuing a cease and desist to stop one of the Super Smash Bros. community’s largest tournaments. Nintendo then began to take down several Smash Bros. mod showcase videos on YouTube, and eventually canceled the official live stream of a Splatoon tournament due to the participating team names including #FreeSmash propaganda. The company also made various disappointing announcements regarding discontinuing game support for Super Mario Maker Wii U, and most recently removed a large portion of DSiWare games from the 3DS eShop.

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However, every DMCA takedown Nintendo has issued seems minuscule compared to the number of titles removed from its strike against Game Jolt. The takedown notice was made public by Game Jolt co-founder and CEO Yaprak DeCarmine which included now-defunct links to 379 titles, all of which have been removed from the platform as a result of the takedown. In the notice, Nintendo claims that the web pages associated with the links display content belonging to Nintendo, and that Game Jolt generates revenue by running advertisements on the page. Nintendo requested that the “infringing content” be removed, and Game Jolt has complied.

The fan-made games that were targeted used assets from Super Mario, Pokemon, and The Legend of Zelda, three of Nintendo’s largest IPs. While the vast majority of the 379 titles listed were fan-made projects, some titles such as Super Mario 64 and Pokemon Gold were blatant copies of the original titles. However, according to Nintendo’s notice, it seems as if it was less worried about the creation of fan-made content and more concerned that Game Jolt was earning revenue from advertisers.

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While Nintendo has made it abundantly clear that it does not want anyone else profiting off of its intellectual properties, this takedown seems like a slap in the face to the fan-made games’ creators. The creators weren’t receiving funds for their passion projects but were still forcibly removed by Nintendo. Hopefully, these titles can find a new place to call home that can’t be touched by Nintendo’s greedy paws.

Source: Game Jolt

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Zackerie Fairfax
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Achievement Unlocked! You’ve found Zackerie Fairfax’s hidden bio. Zack is a staff writer for Screen Rant covering a number of topics ranging from the latest streamer scandal to how many gigaflops are in an Xbox. When not writing about video games, he is playing them. Primarily niche 3D platformers/adventure games that only he thinks should be ported to every next-gen console for the rest of eternity.

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