Nintendo brings out the heavy artillery

When it comes to someone else’s use of their intellectual property, Nintendo doesn’t take a joke. Lawyers repeatedly warn committed fan projects and put a stop to loyal players if they want to use the company’s brands. YouTube musicians aren’t immune to Nintendo’s sledgehammer methods either.

Nintendo puts a stop to music YouTubers

No other gaming company takes such rigorous action against its own fan base as Nintendo. Countless fan projects based on the company’s well-known brands have already been warned by Nintendo’s lawyers and shortly thereafter stopped by the developers. Whether Pokémon, Mario or Metroid – Nintendo protects its IPs with all severity.

YouTuber SynaMax, who often uploads self-made remixes or covers of well-known songs to his channel, including those by Metroid Prime, also felt the effects of this. That called Nintendo’s legal department into action. As he describes in a short video, a company lawyer called him on May 31, 2022 and demanded that that he takes 9 of his videos offline. These contained, among other things, copy-protected sound material from the Metroid games.

SynaMax promptly implemented Nintendo’s request, but somehow feels let down by the company:

“I’m really disappointed in Nintendo for forcing me to delete these videos, because they require compulsory licenses.“

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Why doesn’t Nintendo choose a different path?

SynaMax mentions in the video that due to this limitation he no longer feels able to create new music tracks and remixes based on Metroid Prime or other Nintendo games. While SynaMax admits that Nintendo has every right to have its videos taken offline, wishes, however, that the company would approach this problem more liberally.

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For example, he gives some examples of his remixes, which the Content ID system also recognized as copies, but were subsequently only demonetized by the copyright holder. These videos are still available on YouTube – only SynaMax doesn’t earn a single cent from them. He thinks that’s perfectly fine too, as all he wants is for his viewers to be able to hear his music – money isn’t an issue in this case.

For Nintendo fans, however, this story should send out a clear signal: anyone who tampers with our brands will burn their fingers.