Last week was thrilling for the Zelda: Breath of the Wild mod scene. A year and a half after proposing the idea of a multiplayer mod, YouTuber PointCrow released the first public version of the mod (and with a $10,000 cash prize). Shortly thereafter, Nintendo filed a YouTube copyright complaint against several of PointCrow's videos. On Tuesday of this week, he announced on Discord that he would remove the download links for the mods while he is "in talks with Nintendo."

"I have removed the mod on this Discord as I am currently in talks with Nintendo. Please understand that what I can share now is that I will update you all as best I can without speculation. [Thank you very much. [Especially with the release of the highly anticipated sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, just a month away. Hard to get excited about Tears of the Kingdom when the Zelda community has been removed from YouTube," Pointclaw tweeted Wednesday.

This is not the first time Nintendo has been sued over the use of its games, but the case of Breath of the Wild's multiplayer mod is unusual. Prominent YouTubers (PointCrow has nearly 1.6 million followers) are rarely involved in creating or commissioning mods themselves. As of this writing, PointCrow and Nintendo have not responded to requests for comment.

Update: In a video posted Friday, Pointclaw said that Nintendo has made two copyright strikes against his channel regarding Breath of the Wild multiplayer videos, "intentionally endangering (his) channel." YouTube's Terms of Service (opens in new tab) states that if a YouTube account receives three copyright strikes, the account is "subject to termination, along with the associated channel."

"The next day, Nintendo claimed 24 more videos from my channel. 'Most of them are modded content. Most of them are Breath of the Wild, but not all of them. They also feature regular gameplay videos. Not to mention fair use considerations, which means that all of these videos are clearly in line with Nintendo's own game content guidelines (opens in new tab) for online video and image sharing platforms."

"The precedent they set in this case may well apply to their upcoming release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdoms. As per their decision to remove gameplay and challenge videos along with modified content, it will be difficult for any content creator to post creative concepts without fear of Nintendo enforcing their copyright on videos that are in line with Nintendo's policies. In fact, what Nintendo has demonstrated here is that they will selectively enforce their intellectual property without regard to their own policies or licenses. In other words, if you upload a video featuring Nintendo content, no matter how transformative or directly in line with their published guidelines, you are at risk."

Original text follows.

"Point Crow has publicly stated that they will fund the project with $10,000, which is exactly what Nintendo doesn't want to see," said Waikuteru, a Breath of the Wild modder who also runs a YouTube channel. Breath of the Wild multiplayer may be a particularly tricky subject, as YouTuber Croton recently published a video using another local split-screen Breath of the Wild mod, which also received a copyright complaint from Nintendo on Wednesday.

Waikuteru, who has been making mods and Breath of the Wild videos for several years, received about 500 automatic copyright claims from Nintendo, but no strikes.

"The first wave of claims happened in January 2022. However, Nintendo broke YouTube's guidelines and claimed the videos back that had been previously resolved and claimed. So I repeated the process, took them back and they claimed.

Especially before July 2022, videos with copyright infringement claims would disappear for 48 hours and remain hidden for 30 days after the claim was resolved. Since then, YouTube has changed its system so that during the appeal process, videos are instantly redisplayed and monetized again after only one week. Last year, Waikuteru called on modding fans to petition Nintendo to change its stance on modded videos.

Based on last week's events, that has not happened. Still, thousands of videos emulating "Breath of the Wild" remain on YouTube, and countless other Nintendo games have been modified and enhanced through emulation. And the mods themselves remain uncontested online on sites like GameBanana, free from YouTube's corporate-friendly copyright claim system. While there seems little risk in modifying a Nintendo game, there is much more risk in promoting that mod in the form of a video, especially if the mod relies on YouTube advertising for revenue.

"To be honest, when the first wave of complaints came in, I thought, 'Have two years [of modding] gone to waste?'" says Waikuteru.

"At that point, I didn't realize how easy it would be to get the video back. It is certainly a complicated situation. On the one hand, Nintendo is the copyright holder of the original; on the other hand, we use it to create a new creation, and then we are the copyright holder of that new creation.

"If Nintendo reads this, I would like to tell them: thanks to our mods and videos, we have basically created free promotion for our games, extending the life of the game and also resulting in more fans eventually buying the game. Please follow the example of other game developers offering mod tools to their communities.

Point Crow and the "BotW" multiplayer mod development team have not stated if the mod will be re-uploaded or if development will continue.

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