Nintendo continues to show how zealously it will guard even the tiniest shred of its intellectual property. No sooner does Nintendo take down a YouTuber with 3,300 copyright strikes does its lawyers take aim at the next unlucky YouTuber on its list.
DeoxysPrime, a YouTuber with over 165,000 subscribers, has announced they’ll be removing all Nintendo soundtracks from their channel after receiving over 500 copyright strikes.
"Effective immediately I will be removing all Nintendo music from my channel," wrote DeoxysPrime on Twitter. "With 500+ claims and a dozen soundtracks blocked over the last week it's pretty clear they don't want their music on YouTube. I'm sorry to everyone who enjoys their music but I don't have much choice."
DeoxysPrime later posted a list of songs that were taken down, which included tracks from Mario Kart, F-Zero, Star Fox 64, Donkey Kong Country, Splatoon 2, and several Smash Bros. titles. Many of the songs removed aren’t available commercially.
"It's frustrating but as I've said before it's ultimately their choice to have their music blocked on the platform," DeoxysPrime added. A message on their YouTube page encourages subscribers to push Nintendo to officially release its music library on services like Spotify.
Nintendo seems to be taking aim at YouTubers uploading game soundtracks as of late. Even if those YouTube accounts aren't monetizing the uploaded songs, Nintendo will stick sick its lawyers on anyone using its property without authorization. Earlier this year, YouTuber GilvaSunner was hit first with 1,300 copyright strikes and then a further 2,200 strikes--so many that they were eventually forced to take their channel down for good.
"I’ve decided that at this point it’s really not worth it to keep the channel up any longer," wrote GilvaSunner last February. "I know this is disappointing to read for a lot of you, but I hope you can respect my decision to want to move on at this point."
This wouldn't be such a shame if Nintendo would just upload its music, but the Japanese publisher seems to dislike taking even the smallest of steps to make its music more publicly available. The Pokemon Diamond & Pearl Sound Database, which contained the soundtracks to both games, was taken down without any explanation after just three months, perhaps indicating that Nintendo will even get in its own way to prevent its songs from being posted online.