Nintendo does not love fan-made products. They’ll look the other way on some light modding, but once hobbyists start getting into full fan game territory, they take things very seriously. Unfortunately for particularly ambitious fans, copyright law isn’t quite as simple as the common knowledge of “It’s OK as long as I don’t charge any money,” and the Pokémon Uranium creators aren’t taking any chances—after the 1.5 million they already took, that is.
The Pokémon fan game saw the release of its most complete version last week, and that garnered it more than a little attention. More outlets (like us) picked up on it, and download count skyrocketed, but not all of the attention was good. According to Uranium‘s creators, sites hosting downloads for the game began receiving DMCA takedown notices from Nintendo of America’s lawyers, so they preemptively removed links to download hosts from their site with the following statement:
“After receiving more than 1,500,000 downloads of our game, we have been notified of multiple takedown notices from lawyers representing Nintendo of America. While we have not personally been contacted, it’s clear what their wishes are, and we respect those wishes deeply.
“Therefore, we will no longer provide official download links for the game through our website. We have no connection to fans who reupload the game files to their own hosts, and we cannot verify that those download links are all legitimate. We advise you to be extremely cautious about downloading the game from unofficial sources.
“We are blown away by the response this game has received, and we thank you all so much for your outstanding support. We will continue to provide Pokémon Uranium-related news and updates through our official channels. You are welcome to continue discussing and sharing content related to the game on our forums and Discord, where there is a very active community.
“Thank you for reading, and let’s share the love of Pokémon!”
While they caution against downloading copies that have potentially been tampered with, 1.5 million copies out there in the hands of players should make the game pretty easy to find on the Internet, even if the creators won’t officially help. (“Project M download” and “AM2R download” are among the top Google search suggestions for the names of two ostensibly shut down, Nintendo-based fan games.) Getting out now, before Nintendo mounted any legal action against them specifically, was probably the best option for Uranium‘s creators, and the game should have no trouble living on.
You’ll just have to go searching through the tall grass a bit to find it.
(via Eurogamer, image via Pokémon Uranium)
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