Last week was a thrilling one for the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild modding scene. A year and a half after pitching the idea for a multiplayer mod (and being paid a $10,000 bounty to sweeten the pot), YouTuber PointCrow has released the first public version of the mod. Shortly after, Nintendo filed a YouTube copyright infringement claim against some of PointCrow’s videos. This Tuesday, he announced on his Discord that he was removing his link to download the mod “during negotiations with Nintendo.”
“I am currently in talks with Nintendo so I have removed this mod on Discord. Please understand that all I can share right now is not speculation and will update as much as possible. [Thank you so much],” read PointCrow’s full statement.
The mod’s release and subsequent removal caused an emotional whiplash in the Zelda modding community. “It’s hard to get excited about Tears of the Kingdom when the Zelda community is being taken down entirely from YouTube,” PointCrow tweeted Wednesday.
While Nintendo’s litigation over the use of its games is nothing new, the Breath of the Wild multiplayer mod case is unusual. High-profile YouTubers (PointCrow has about 1.6 million followers) are rarely involved in creating or commissioning mods. As of this writing, PointCrow and Nintendo have not responded to requests for comment.
“PointCrow has announced they will be funding this with $10,000, which is something Nintendo doesn’t want to see.” successful youtube channelBut money isn’t the only factor here. YouTuber Croton, who recently published a video using another local split-screen Breath of the Wild mod, also said: Received a copyright claim from Nintendo on wednesday.
After several years of making mods and videos for Breath of the Wild, Waikuteru has dealt with nearly 500 automated copyright infringement claims from Nintendo without a strike.
“The first wave of claims occurred in January 2022, after which we challenged, appealed, and took back the videos. So I repeated the process: got them back, they claimed, etc. There was usually a two-month gap between these occurrences.” Wychtel says.
Dealing with claims of copyright infringement has been a frustrating process, especially until July 2022. Even though the claim was resolved, the claimed video remained unviewed for 48 hours and disabled for monetization for 30 days. Then YouTube changed their system, the video will instantly reappear during the appeal process and will be monetized again after just one week. Last year, Waikuteru called on his mod fans to unite and petition Nintendo to change its stance on mod videos.
Based on last week’s events, that hasn’t happened. Still, thousands of emulated Breath of the Wild videos remain on YouTube, alongside countless other Nintendo games that have been modified or enhanced through emulation.And the mod itself remains online and uncontested on sites like game banana, YouTube’s copyright claim system for businesses is free. While there seems to be little risk of modding Nintendo games, promoting those mods in video format is much more difficult, especially if you rely on YouTube ads for your revenue.
“Honestly, when the first wave of bills came, I was like, ‘Well, two years. [of modding] At this point, I didn’t know that videos could be easily recovered. It’s certainly a complicated situation. On the one hand, Nintendo is the original copyright owner, and on the other hand, we have created a new work from Nintendo and are the copyright owner of that new work.
“If Nintendo read it, I want to tell them the following. Thanks to our mods and videos, we basically create free promotions for the game, extend the life of the game, Ultimately, this results in more fans buying the game. Give examples of other game developers who provide modding tools to the community.”
The teams behind the PointCrow and BotW multiplayer mods have not disclosed if the mod will be re-uploaded or if development will continue.
