“Nintendo Is Extremely Draconian”- YouTuber Slams the Japanese Giant Nintendo for Their DMCA Practices

Nintendo is one of the biggest and most beloved companies in the gaming world. The IPs and systems of this giant company single-handedly have defined gaming for many gamers in their childhood. But there are some aspects of this establishment that upset the community from time to time. 

And one of the main setbacks of the company is its practices with copyrights regarding their IPs and assets. A Youtuber named ReviewTechUSA compiled all the recent squashing of community projects by Nintendo and criticized the company for its “Draconian” practices. 

ReviewtechUSA talks about Nintendo and their recent strike against another YouTuber 

ReviewTechUSA recently made a video called, “Nintendo Goes On (Another) DMCA Rampage”. In the video, the YouTuber said, “Nintendo is extremely Draconian with their copyright.” He brought up the recent instance involving another YouTuber called, “DidYouKnowGaming” who had to take down one of his recent videos because of a strike. 

“DidYouKnowGaming” made a video on the topic of Heroes of Hyrule. It was a potential game from Retro Studios, who planned to make a Legend of Zelda game with Final Fantasy-style turn-based combat, which will follow three heroes on their journey to save Link. But Nintendo rejected the pitch for the game and the project was scrapped. DYKGaming made a video to document this piece of gaming history, which had to be taken down because of Nintendo’s notice.

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DYKGaming retorted against the gaming company by tweeting, “Nintendo has removed our Heroes of Hyrule video from YouTube. This was a journalistic video documenting a game that Retro Studios pitched to Nintendo nearly 20 years ago. This is an attempt by a large corporation to silence whatever journalism they don’t like, and a slap in the face for video game history preservation. We are exploring all available options to restore the video.“

Other DMCA takedowns by the Japanese Giant

ReviewTechUSA also brought up other major takedowns by the gaming company. Including the SteamGridDB and Commodore 64 Mario port community project. Nintendo had raised some flags against SteamGridDB, because the website hosted pictures of many Nintendo games that fans can download. 

The Super Mario Bros Commodore 64 port was a project by the fans to port the beloved classic game to one of the oldest and most influential consoles of our time. But after a notice from Nintendo, the team had to take the game files down from their website.

The indie developers of the port wrote on Twitter, “Good times. Due to a DMCA takedown notice we had to remove the Super Mario Bros 64 download from our website blog post from 4 days ago. Hopefully everyone enjoys the #Commodore 64 #C64 game who was able to snag it.”

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