Nintendo is starting to crack down on popular speed-running and ROM hacking YouTube channels. The company has issued several copyright claims on many channels featuring speed-run videos of Mario games and on channels featuring ROM hacks of other Nintendo games. While Nintendo’s relationship with YouTube has always been widely regarded as draconian, this is taking things to a new level.

Popular speedrunner PangaeaPanga, whose YouTube channel centers around speedrunning Nintendo games, has just tweeted that his entire channel has been “wrecked” by Nintendo. “RIP me,” he wrote. His most popular video, Item Abuse 3, which was labelled the “Hardest Super Mario World Level Ever,” has been taken down. It had over a million views before Nintendo issued a copyright claim on the video, along with approximately 80% of the rest of PangaeaPanga’s channel.

PangaeaPanga, or Alex, says the reason his videos were taken down is that Nintendo is becoming more aggressive in its efforts to control appearances of ROM hacking on YouTube. Another popular YouTuber, who goes by the handle @switchpalacecorner, was sent this email by Nintendo.

We wish to inform you that the videos in question infringe Nintendo’s copyrights. As the owner of the copyright in the games: Mario Kart 8, Super Mario World, and Pokémon, Nintendo has the exclusive right to perform the games publicly or to make derivative works based on the games. By making a derivative work using Nintendo’s IP, and then displaying Nintendo’s IP on your YouTube channel, you have violated Nintendo’s exclusive rights.

Nintendo understands that its fans are the reason for its success, and we are always happy to see people share their passion for Nintendo’s games. At the same time, Nintendo’s intellectual property constitutes its most valuable assets, and the unauthorized use of these assets jeopardizes Nintendo’s rights. Because of this, we ask that you please remove the video in question from your channel, and confirm that you will not post any videos using unauthorized software or copies of games, distribute or continue work on the modification, or take any other steps that would infringe Nintendo’s rights.

Nintendo encourages fan engagement on YouTube through the Nintendo Creators Program. Under the program, participants are granted a license to use Nintendo’s characters, games, and other intellectual property, subject to the Code of Conduct included with the agreement. However, please note that this Code of Conduct prohibits you, among other things, from posting any content using unauthorized software or copies of games. This includes videos featuring tool-assisted speedruns, which require making a copy of a game’s ROM file, and running the copied ROM through an emulator. If you are interested in learning more about the Nintendo Creators Program, please see:

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

Nintendo Anti-Piracy Team

Switchpalacecorner notes that Nintendo appears to be asking him to take down his videos, but in fact had already forcibly removed them by the time he received this email.

“It just hurts to see how two very active communities that I participate in, the hacking community (SMWCentral, a site dedicated to SMW hacking) and TASing community (TASVideos, a site dedicated to TASes) are being targeted,” Alex told Kotaku. “It is also sad to see how these works that I have made throughout my childhood (including the Item Abuse series) are now being removed from YouTube (80% of my videos were removed), and that goes for people from these communities, not just me.”

Many other speedrun videos across YouTube are disappearing. Some suspect Nintendo is making this move now because of the recent release of Super Mario Maker and that the company wants to stop people from being able to share their ROM hacks in order to make them buy the game. Whatever the case, it seems Nintendo isn’t backing down.