Nintendo Does Another DMCA Blitz On YouTube Video Game Music Not Available Elsewhere
Earlier this year, we discussed Nintendo — dubbed by me as “the Disney of video gaming” — having gone on a DMCA blitz on YouTube videos that are essentially just new and classic video game music. This has been something Nintendo has ramped up over the years, taking down 100 videos in 2019, more than that in 2020, and then over 1,300 in 2022. That last one mostly targeted a single YouTube account, that of GilvaSunner, who later shut down his account due to all this nonsense.
What’s important to keep in mind with all of this is that, other than basically some music from some Pokemon games, Nintendo does not make this music available elsewhere for streaming. In other words, the public wants a product of Nintendo that it doesn’t directly sell or make available, but Nintendo refuses to also let the internet fill this need free of charge. The music videos don’t compete with Nintendo, in other words, but the company refuses to allow the public to consume them.
And this is still going on. The company recently got over 500 of these music-only videos removed from YouTube, largely all uploaded by one user again, DeoxysPrime. DeoxysPrime, given the pressure from the DMCA takedowns, is simply going to remove all Nintendo music from his/her channel.
The reaction to all of this from fans of Nintendo’s games and their music has been fairly uniform: confusion mixed with irritation. And the reason for that is very clear. Nintendo is removing access to this beloved music without bothering to offer its own method for listening to it.
“It really makes me wonder why Nintendo still hasn’t created their own VEVO channel or addEd OSTs to music streaming services. Even Disney has the decency to do both,” said one fan on the Restera forum.
“Why don’t they let people pay to listen to this stuff, everybody wins,” said another.
Perhaps Nintendo has plans to offer some way to stream music from its games that hasn’t been made public yet. But this DMCA blitz on game music, as noted earlier, has been going on for several years now.
So as it stands now, this all looks like Nintendo pissing on the legs of its fans without any good reason.