Screwed By The Lawyers / Fan Works

• Nintendo has become notorious for how often they shut down fan works. Making any kind of project using their IPs is a huge gamble, as it may not even reach a finished state before they respond with a legal hammer.
  • The Legend of Zelda fan-movie The Hero of Time was prevented distribution by Nintendo via cease-and-desist letter due to their then-refusal to have any of their video game franchises adapted into films after the catastrophic flop of Super Mario Bros. (1993) However, Nintendo was nice enough to let the creators keep the movie up for about half a month in the holiday spirit at the end of 2009, which is a hell of a lot better than most companies do.
  • Downplayed with Project M - Nintendo did not directly intervene with it, but the creators realized that the mod's scope had grown so large that Nintendo could have sued them instead of merely issuing a C&D letter, prompting them to stop development voluntarily.
  • Metroid II: Return of Samus was remade by a single fan, taking over 8 years to finish and released on August 7th, 2016 as Another Metroid 2 Remake. Not even a day later, Nintendo's lawyers issued a DMCA, causing all links to the download to be yanked offline. Fans took this about as well as you would expect. It would eventually turn out that Nintendo was quietly working on their own remake at the time, Metroid: Samus Returns, and thus likely didn't want the fangame to take the spotlight.
  • Pokémon fan works are hit especially hard, most likely because the franchise is a joint collaboration between Nintendo and The Pokémon Company:
    • The fan game Pokémon Uranium was up for a day or two, receiving over 1.5 million downloads, before it was hit with a DMCA order. Its legitimacy wasn't verified as with AM2R, but the development team decided to play it safe and removed the download links anyway. This didn't sting quite as much since, unlike Metroid, Pokémon is still a healthy franchise, but it still came as a slap in the face after 9 years in development. (That the fan game is considerably Darker and Edgier than many of the main series titles and features human death within the first 30 minutes might have something to do with it.)
    • It happened yet again on December 2016, when the highly-anticipated Pokémon Crystal hack Pokémon Prism (itself having taken over 8 years to finish) got C&D'd, alongside its predecessors Pokémon Brown and Pokémon RijonAdventures by the same author.
    • In August 2018, Nintendo took down the wiki for Pokémon Essentials, a fan project that was the basis for games they had previously targeted like Pokémon Fusion Generation and Uranium, despite it having been distributed for over a decade without any issues. This didn't hit as hard as they'd planned, as most of the wiki remained intact under a new URL.
    • Pixelmon, a Game Mod for Minecraft which combined its gameplay with that of Pokémon, had its development halted due to a request sent out by The Pokemon Company. It escaped this fate when the assets for the mod were later used to create continuations (such as Pixelmon Generations and Pixelmon Let's Go) without its original developers. Coincidentally enough, Nintendo would go on to announce the Minecraft-esque Pokémon Quest less than a year later, leading fans to assume that they shut down Pixelmon to make their own game look good.
    • Pokémon Brick Bronze was a game built on the Roblox Engine before its developers were sent a DMCA order by the Pokémon Company and forced to delete it three years after it was released. They later reused some of the assets to produce Loomian Legacy, which was set as an Alternate Universe without any Pokémon.
  • The Patreon for Alvin-Earthworm's Super Mario Bros. Z was taken down by Nintendo mid-February 2016.
  • Nintendo struck again on the first of September 2016, with a DMCA takedown notice for 562 fan-games hosted at GameJolt.
  • Super Mario Battle Royale, an unofficial battle royale version of Super Mario Bros., was DMCA'd shortly after its release. The creator tried removing the Mario assets and re-releasing the game as DMCA Royale (starring Infringio), but was told by Nintendo's lawyers that the new version still infringed their copyright and had to take down the game for good. In total, the games lasted about ten days.
  • Kirby Reanimated, a Multi-Animator Project which recreated the Kirby: Right Back at Ya! episode "Cartoon Buffoon", was copyright-blocked from YouTube by Nintendo^note or an impostor as the project's creators claim, the verification being dubious like it was in Pokémon Uranium twice in 2020, once in April and again in May. However, the official Newgrounds and Vimeo versions still exist alongside YouTube re-uploads from outside sources.
  • Defied with The Legend of Zelda CD-i Remasters. The developer deliberately took down his download links shortly after release to avoid Nintendo attacking the project themselves, allowing it to live on through fan redistribution.
• This has happened to both Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes and Chrono Trigger Resurrection, as Square Enix does not take fan projects sitting down.
• The fangame Streets of Rage Remake (which was in development for eight years) was yanked off of its website days after completion due to Sega wanting to protect their IP, despite the fact that Sega had (supposedly) given their blessing for the project on the condition that it was not sold for profit. Some theorized that it was because of the recent mobile phone port of Streets of Rage 2. Luckily, even though developer Bomber Games is legally unable to distribute it, that hasn't stopped fans from circulating the final version on the web anyway.
• MechWarrior Living Legends was a fan-made (and officially licensed) total conversion Game Mod for Crysis Warhead, first released in late 2009. It offered combined-arms gameplay (infantry, tanks, aircraft, and battlemechs all fighting at once) unique to the franchise. A few months after the official new game, MechWarrior Online (a free-to-play game) was released in 2011, the Living Legends developers were forced to quit developing and disband after their final update (0.7.1) released in January 2013, as the developers of Online essentially yanked the MechWarrior license away from the Living Legends development team. The official reasoning was that the Online developers "didn't want to double up their efforts" to compete with a free mod with a total playerbase of about a thousand players (about 1% of Online's) which was, embarrassingly, releasing new content at a faster rate. 0.7.1 was the developer's swan song, incorporating several new vehicles, a comprehensive balance pass, optimizations, and a series of What Could Have Been threads on the game's forum showing new features that didn't have enough time to be finalized.
  • The team (MekTek) developing the free release of Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries and its Expansion Pack / Game Mod "Mekpak" got caught up in the same legal scuffle - they, like Living Legends, had the rights to distribute the game (granted by Microsoft) - but when Online came out, their license mysteriously disappeared when Online's development team acquired the rights to the franchise. Unlike Living Legends which could continue to distribute their game, Mektek was required to remove all copies of the game from their website.
• Downplayed with Black Mesa, a Fan Remake of Half-Life using Half-Life 2's Source engine. Valve Software agreed to let the project go ahead (even allowing the incomplete version to be sold, for money, on Steam), on condition that they take the subtitle "Source" off the project since it wasn't an official Valve release, and that Valve got first dibs on playing it.
• The Warhammer 40,000 fan-film Damnatus originally had Games Workshop's full support, but during post production, problems with intellectual property rights arose due to differences between British and German copyright law.^note Long story short if Games Workshop did not defend their copyright (not trademark- copyright) once they knew about the infringement, they would forfeit all claim to the copyright. This would be a death sentence for them, as it's their major product. In addition, a separate law stipulates the only way to transfer a copyright in Germany is through inheritance. Because a fan studio made the film, Games Workshop was unable to fully acquire the rights, therefore preventing them from "defending" Warhammer 40000 that way. Thus, the movie was banned from official release. However, the team was told that they didn't have to delete the copy on their servers but couldn't release it. They agreed and didn't put any security on their servers to prevent hacking; the film quickly leaked and can now be found on YouTube among numerous sites.
• Turn Signals on a Land Raider, a Warhammer 40K webcomic, stopped because it was becoming too time-consuming and expensive to do. The reason the lawyers got involved is that the only way to really give it a chance to make enough money to continue was to make it into a book. But Games Workshop refused to grant permission. Despite that refusal being of questionable legality (as a parody, it would probably be justifiable as fair use), it wouldn't be worth the hassle if the guy got sued. However, Games Workshop later changed their minds and gave their blessing to a revival of the comic.
• A YouTube user by the name of DisneyNAW spent nearly an entire year working on a fan-film called "The Grand Adventure" which was pretty much a Mega Crossover of everything Disney starring Mickey, Donald and Goofy as they try to take down Chernabog. Halfway through the editing, he got a letter from Disney telling him not to post it online. Not for copyright law or anything, though that could be considered a major factor, but because of how certain characters are portrayed. First was Mickey, who was portrayed as mischievous. While they thought he perfectly captured his character, they wanted to bring Mickey's mischievous character their own way. And the second was Chernabog being portrayed as an Expy of The Devil, which collides with another reason why they C&D'd it: It felt a little too dark and edgy to them. Despite these reasons, they enjoyed watching the movie and gave DisneyNAW compliments on making the film (this may be Hilarious in Hindsight with the Mickey Mouse (2013) series's portrayal of Mickey plus a Night On Bald Mountain movie being announced.)
• This was part of the reason why Dragon Ball Z Abridged went back on its plans to do the Buu saga, as Team Four Star was getting fed up with Toei copyright striking their episodes. This wasn’t the entire reason, though, as they were also dealing with heavy burnout.
• A modding group building a total conversion of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim into Middle-Earth was told to C&D by Warner Brothers because they didn't want it competing with The Lord of the Rings Online.
• Marvel Comics put the kibosh on various super hero skins for The Sims.
• In late February 2015, a Power Rangers Darker and Edgier "bootleg movie", Power/Rangers, was released to the Internet. Not only was the movie incredibly polarizing to the fanbase and non-fans, Saban Brands did not like this at all and put in C&D notices for it on YouTube and Vimeo, where they were hosted. Saban and the filmmakers eventually compromised by reuploading the film on YouTube and Vimeo with a copyright disclaimer-slash-content warning at the beginning of the film stating that it is a fan film completely unassociated with Saban Brands that really shouldn't be watched by little kids.
• Equestria Daily staff member "Alexstrasza" created a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic T-shirt parodying Game of Thrones, featuring Twilight Sparkle as Ned Stark and with the motto "Winter is Coming" on the bottom. A week after it was posted on Teepublic, the site found out a week later, through an angry letter from HBO, that the motto had been trademarked by the network that year and had to pull the shirt from the store. Alexstrasza later posted a slightly modified version of the shirt, with the less infringing phrase, "Friendship is Coming," a suggestion that Equestria Daily administrator Sethisto did not fail to bring up shortly after announcing its takedown.
• A number of amateur game programmers were attempting to make an MMORPG based on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and had the game's servers running for about a month before Hasbro slapped them with a C&D letter. At first they thought it was a hoax from some troll, but closer inspection revealed that it was indeed the real Hasbro. Presumably this was to avoid conflict with the Gameloft game Hasbro later released.
  • My Little Pony: Fighting Is Magic got hit with the same thing a couple of weeks later. Just to twist the knife, this was only a couple of days after Fighting is Magic was confirmed to be going to the EVO Championship Series!^note Which was probably why it happened The reaction from the Periphery Demographic was really unanimous.
    • However, a few weeks later, the original creator of Friendship is Magic, Lauren Faust, offered to help the creators finish what they started by creating new original characters. The game was revived, but is now sailing in a slightly different direction.
    • Some two and a half years later the project has since been revived in the form of Them's Fightin' Herds which drops the My Little Pony elements in favor of different non-pony ungulate characters.
  • Parodied in Canterlot Siege 4, as the True Final Boss is a Lawyer who is capable of shooting towers to make them vanish with a "cease and desist". If he reaches the end, a screen will appear where he gives Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity a "cease and desist". This scene would've been worse if it still showed Mane-iac shampooing the Mane 6^note Or in the case of Canterlot Siege 3, a "Game Over" screen where the Power Ponies get defeated/blown away , but it goes the extra mile by including an actual scene of the Lawyer giving the "cease-and-desist". It's made even more so when aside from the intro where the Power Ponies confront Mane-iac, this is the only other speech bubble cutscene in the game.
• Star Trek fan movie Star Trek: Axanar, the continuation of Prelude to Axanar was hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit from Paramount after their 2015 yearly report showed producer Alec Peters paying himself a $38,000 salary and funding a separate movie studio from donations to the project. Ultimately, CBS and Paramount set up a set of rules for fan works to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.
• This is why the first part of Kill la Kill AU's Wish arc isn't available on YouTube, as, because of having the instrumental version of Broken Wings, it was blocked for viewing in the US by Victor Entertainment, so, with the alternative being "audioswapping" or going back to edit the original video file, Amoridere took it down. This is also why one of the links to BGM in a chapter from Kiryuuin Chronicles was changed to a track from the Kill la Kill soundtrack.
• Grand Dad Mania, a Fan Sequel to the infamous 7 Grand Dad bootleg, was taken down from GameJolt in December 2017 after Warner Bros. complained to them about the game infringing content from The Flintstones. The game had already been cancelled back in February of that year, meaning that if the developers had decided to keep working on it, it would have ultimately been screwed anyway.
• All private servers emulating Club Penguin, created to replace the official game after being shut down, were sent DMCA takedown notices by Disney, after Pædo Hunt concerns rose over the popular one Club Penguin Online (which was notorious for unmoderated chat) and a person involved in the server was arrested on charges of possessing child pornography.
• Total Drama Reunion was hit with a DMCA takedown from Fresh TV before it even got a chance to finish uploading the remaining parts of Episode 1 or upload more episodes. Presumably, it was due to Fresh TV working on a reboot/revival of Total Drama of its own and not wanting the fan video to outshine it.
• Button's Adventures by JanAnimations was given a cease and desist by Hasbro's legal team after its lone episode was uploaded to YouTube. The status was in legal limbo for a few years afterward with Jan being allowed to post other fan content such as "Don't Mine at Night". Jan eventually ended the series once and for all with a PMV fittingly called "Game Over".
• mtgDAO was going to be a fanmade Magic: The Gathering format that required you to purchase NFTs tied to the cards you wanted to use in it. Then its creator received a letter warning them that it would be copyright and trademark infringement. The project was abandoned shortly afterwards.
• The reason why Mario in Animatronic Horror was taken down (and by extension, work on Mario in Animatronic Horror: The Nightmare Begins stopped) was because GalacticStar Studios was given a cease-and-desist from Team Ari, creators of (Mario) The Music Box, which accused them of plagiarism. Even if Hazah wanted to reupload the game, he cannot due to Nintendo's infamous habit of taking down Mario fangames.

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