• Home
  • The Tech Tin About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy

The Tech Tin

The Best In Tech

  • New Technology
  • Cool Gadgets
  • Latest Tech & Gadgets
  • Tech & Gadget Reviews
  • Tech & Gadget News
  • Gadgets Shop

Nintendo Mass DMCA Takedown Removes Hundreds of Fangames from Game Jolt

Leave a Comment

game jolt logoAs one of the most iconic gaming manufacturers in the world, Nintendo has been fighting piracy for decades.

The company has an in-house anti-piracy division that signals the latest threats to steer enforcement actions in the right direction.

In recent years it’s gone after sites and stores that offer pirated games and has assisted in the criminal prosecution against alleged members of the hacking group Team-Xecutuer. However, the smaller fish are not being ignored either.

Nintendo Targets Non-profit Fangames

A few days ago, Nintendo’s legal department sent DMCA notices to the game publishing community Game Jolt. The site, where hobbyists and indie developers share their creations for free, was notified that hundreds of fangames infringed Nintendo’s trademarks.

game jolt dmca notice from nintendo

The takedown spree, which was published publicly by Game Jolt co-founder and CEO Yaprak DeCarmine, notes that the games in question use copies of Nintendo’s intellectual property without permission. Game Jolt allegedly profits from this.

“These web pages display images of Nintendo’s video game characters in connection with unauthorized online games that copy the characters, music, and other features of Nintendo’s video games.

“The web site at gamejolt.com generates revenue from advertising banners displayed on the site and advertisements played while users wait for the games to load,” the takedown notices add.

379 Games

This certainly isn’t the first time that Nintendo has targeted fangames, but the scope of this recent effort is massive. In total, the two notices posted by Game Jolt target 379 game URLs, which were all taken down. Game over.

The developers of the games and many of their fans were taken by surprise. Players were suddenly greeted with a 404 error message like this one and developers received an alert notifying them that their game had been targeted.

game jolt remove

The mass removal is a hot topic in the Game Jolt community. Many people don’t understand why Nintendo would target some of its most dedicated fans. That includes the indie developers who spent weeks or months on their projects.

Game developer ‘Eeveeloverdoesgaming,’ who publishes several Nintendo-inspired games, wasn’t targeted but summarizes the general feeling towards Nintendo quite well.

No Sympathy for Nintendo

“They’ll get no sympathy from me, this isn’t the first time they’ve pulled a stunt like this. They’ve made it clear they hate their fans and repeat it time and time again never learning from it.”

Read  Internet Archive Tells Court its Digital Library is Protected Under Fair Use

The developer will continue to work on his “Five Nights At Team HQ series” but fears that it will be targeted eventually. That doesn’t stop the developer though, and he encourages others to simply flood the Internet with copies.

“Nintendo if you think taking down everyone’s games will help your image and get people to buy more of your games then you’re sorely mistaken! I’ll keep making and reuploading fan games even if you try to take them down, so DEAL WITH IT!

“All people who have copies of the fangames that were taken down take them and reupload them all over the internet so they stay up no matter what!”

Reuploaded

Although some developers prefer to lie low and stay out of Nintendo’s hairs for the foreseeable future, some have indeed brought their games back to life. For example, ‘Jeb Yoshi’, the developer of “Five Nights at Yoshi’s,” re-uploaded it with ads disabled.

“After looking into it, I believe the fact there was profit being earned from advertisements on the game page was the reason for the takedown of this game among countless others,” the dev writes.

jeb_yoshi

‘Jeb Yoshi’ refers to Nintendo’s mention of the advertising element in the DMCA takedown request, which is mentioned by other people as well. They are not sure whether that’s indeed the case though. “Let’s hope this goes well,” the dev wrote on Discord.

In pursuit of more clarity TorrentFreak reached out to Nintendo for a comment but, at the time of writing, we have yet to receive a response. We also reached out to Game Jolt to hear their thoughts on Nintendo’s DMCA requests but the company didn’t immediately reply.

We will update this article if more information becomes available.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest

Nintendo: Soldering a Modchip into a Switch Console Breaches the DMCA Nintendo Wants $15 Million in Damages from Pirate ROM Site GitHub Removes ‘Chimera13’ iOS Jailbreak After DMCA Notice from ‘Unc0ver’ Cloudflare Shared Personal Details of Hundreds of Customers in Response to DMCA Subpoenas

Filed Under: Tech & Gadget News

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Get Your Free Flashlight Here
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Recent Posts

  • DMCA Shortcut Helps Movie Companies Cheaply Identify ‘Potential’ BitTorrent Pirates April 20, 2021
  • YouTube Class Action: Plaintiff Can’t Identify Piracy Without Access to Content ID April 20, 2021
  • Microsoft’s Bing Removed 125 Million ‘Pirate’ URLs Last Year April 19, 2021
  • Nintendo Sues Team-Xecuter’s Gary Bowser For Switch Piracy Offenses April 19, 2021
  • How Hollywood Keeps Breeding New Pirates April 18, 2021

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 61 other subscribers


Copyright © 2021 · The-Tech-Tin.Com