Nintendo Finally Issues Take Down For Super Mario 64 Online

Well, it was only a matter of time and it seems Nintendo has finally noticed the Super Mario 64 Online mod. As expected, the video game giant has issued a takedown notice to the people behind the project, which it has done whenever a fan tribute of any of its IPs come up. The copyright infringement notice affects the software, videos promoting the project, and even the Patreon account of the modders.

As Engadget points out, the project was basically just a plug-in that people using emulators could use in order to play with others in the same space. These players would already have the game in an unofficial setup anyway. This didn’t stop Nintendo from concluding that the service needed to be taken down and the modders punished.

Then again, as the main modder behind the project, Kaze Emanuar explains, the takedown notice really doesn’t mean much as far as the plug-in is concerned. Sure, his Patreon account has been put down, but Nintendo doesn’t really own the plug-in itself. According to the modder, "the download is just a .EXE, they don't own the .EXE”. As such, it’s still available online.

Coming back to the Patreon matter, it would seem that Nintendo contacted the site itself. Deciding that it would be better to do what the really big video game company wants instead of siding with one small user, Patreon decided to take Emanuar’s account down.

This is a rather troubling situation since Emanuar told Polygon that the donations he received on his Patreon account had nothing to do with Super Mario 64 Online. He actually thought that Nintendo would just stop at making him shut the project down.

“I thought that was just a way to tell me to stop working on that, since I thought taking down the tool itself was legally impossible,” Emanuar said. “After all, that’s just my own code. Kind of like ‘Stop developing this or we shut this channel down.’ Or, that is, what it felt like.”

Clearly, this was not the case.