Nintendo Took Down A Did You Know Gaming Video About Zelda And Fans Are Furious
Once again, Nintendo was overprotective of its intellectual property, and the gaming community responded with anger.
Anyone even somewhat familiar with Nintendo's past is likely acutely aware of how litigious of a company it can be. The company has consistently destroyed any website that has hosted ROM files for old Nintendo games, even those that are bordering on extinct and unavailable on other platforms. Things are just as bad for your typical content creator as well. Back in May, Nintendo baffled fans by copyright striking several YouTube videos that contained music from classic "Pokémon" titles. Prior to that, a single YouTuber received over 1,300 copyright strikes for similar music-related posts. But the company's most recent takedown seems even more frivolous than usual.
Did You Know Gaming — a popular YouTube channel that produces gaming-related documentaries — previously published a video documenting the unreleased "Heroes of Hyrule," a "Legend of Zelda" spin-off game from the early 2000s that would be more similar to a tactical strategy game than traditional "Zelda" title. However, Nintendo was apparently none too pleased and had the video taken down on grounds of copyright violation for its use of leaked footage (per Eurogamer). News of this has since spread, and as you could have probably predicted, gamers are pretty aggravated over Nintendo's heavy-handedness when it comes to copyright takedowns.
The internet isn't happy with Nintendo
Nintendo slapping a content creator with a copyright strike for talking about an unreleased game has gone down about as well with the internet as one would expect. In short, gamers are less than amused. After Resetera members shared that Did You Know Gaming was the subject of a takedown from Nintendo, many voiced their support for the YouTube channel and lambasted Nintendo's quick trigger finger when it came to IP. "Nintendo is the most litigious gaming company I've ever seen, followed at some distance by Take 2 / Rockstar," one user replied. "That's just f***ing stupid but I'm not exactly shocked. Just Nintendo things," another said.
One user pointed out that Nintendo taking down Did You Know Gaming's about "Heroes of Hyrule" video made little sense considering the format of the video. "Taking down a video of some people talking about a cancelled 20 year old project seems crazy," they said. "I mean what's next, they'll start taking down podcasts talking about it?"
Despite the overall negative reception Nintendo's latest move garnered, others used the takedown as a small beacon of hope that Nintendo will eventually announce "Heroes of Hyrule" in the near future. The likelihood of that is anyone's guess, though.