Nintendo’s Haphazard ‘Mario Maker 2’ Takedown Process Rife With Abuse
from the willy-nilly dept
We’ve talked for many years about Nintendo’s shotgun approach to IP enforcement, as well as its heavy-handed ToS enforcement policies that can include bricking customer consoles and/or banning their accounts if they do something Nintendo doesn’t like, even if it’s not strictly illegal. This has all set up an ecosystem where being a Nintendo fan and customer can feel like a dangerous prospect, where navigating a capricious company is supposed to be half the fun.
But when that same ecosystem is setup in a way that is wide open to abuse, the fun really begins. That appears to be what is happening right now as Nintendo is removing hundreds of Mario Maker 2 levels made by fans.
The common denominator for these level deletions appears to be the inclusion of a hashtag for “TeamShell,” which is a Discord server dedicated to sharing codes for levels made within the game. Notices about the removal from Nintendo indicate that they were deleted for including “advertising”, which is against Nintendo’s terms of service.
There is no indication that any money is changing hands here. Calling a hashtag to denote that a level was made with a specific Discord server in mind “advertising” is stretching the definition to the point of absurdity. On top of all of this, many of these levels are years old, causing the community to wonder why in the world this was suddenly happening now.
Then someone found this on another Discord server dedicated to the Mario Maker games.
So, who is LMT?
Turns out, the YouTube account linked to LMT’s Discord profile bears the pseudonym of someone called MT94. As explained in a post on AtWiki, MT94 was, at one point, the second-highest-rated Super Mario Maker player in the world.
Turns out that MT94 cheated their way to that ranking, and they achieved this by using three separate Nintendo Switch consoles. By consistently challenging their own accounts to co-op battles in the game, they managed to boost themselves up the rankings. After the community found out and reported them, MT94’s accounts were banned.
Now, I’ve seen some content out there indicating it was TeamShell that had a hand in exposing MT94’s alleged cheating, but nothing solid enough that I consider firm ground. But it’s clear that there is some kind of vendetta at work here. And, while most of you probably view the deletion of some Mario Maker levels as a tame story at most, it is having very real consequences due to how Nintendo conducts it business.
The truly sad thing is that Super Mario Maker users are also reporting that their Nintendo Switch accounts are being suspended as well, as there seems to be a sort of automatic system in place that suspends a Nintendo Switch account if it’s been associated with a certain number of reports.
Nintendo has a choice. It can remain heavy-handed in this manner when it comes to account suspensions for takedowns, but then it needs to actually investigate claims like this to ensure they aren’t falling for abusive takedown requests. Or it can ease up on the severity of its actions and allow for a counternotice system, or another manner for those falsely accused to avoid consequences.
What it should not be allowed to do is continue to let its own customers suffer severe consequences merely because the system it set up is so wide open for this kind of gleeful abuse.
Filed Under: fans, mario maker, takedowns, teamshell
Companies: nintendo
Comments on “Nintendo’s Haphazard ‘Mario Maker 2’ Takedown Process Rife With Abuse”
Nintendo just doesn’t understand that a report function can be used in bad faith.
Apparently the same kind of thing happened on Flipnote Hatena and Miiverse.
Begged questions
Several things are assumed-true which begs the questions below.
TL;DR Trademark requires specific items, and those who later comment on it and use undefined terms (“hashmark”, “channel”, “pound”, “number sign”) only add confusion. Nintendo takes this for granted and runs with it to the court. Don’t YOU let them.
E
Long version:
If an alien life form (hi Alf!!!) saw “hashmark taken” would they ‘get it’? No. So it’s not a tradmark violation.
Patents are not a part of this discussion. Neither are copyrights. That should remove DMCA and §230 from the discussion.
Don’t let Nintendo take “our words” and use them to DEVELOP RIGHTS they don’t have, aren’t entitled to have, and do nothing more than censure our speech.
Re:
You know what else isn’t a part of this discussion?
Trademarks
These takedowns are happening on Nintendo’s own servers, not anybody elses, and they, re based on alleged violations of Nintendo’s TOS.
You know what legal authority they’re relying on?
it boils down to their First Admendment… It ‘s their server, they have the right to run them as they see fit. This isn’t lawfare on Nintendo’s part.. this is them yelling “Git off my lawn”
And do you know what that all means.
It means your word-salad aboit ASCII , aliens, hashbrown, and all was pointless, because it’s not even pretending to be a Trademark issue.
So your entite worl
Re: Re: Comprehension from reading
The article bears re-reading as you think naming a server (with an octothorpe or without) is a trademark issue. It does not. You think it’s a First Amendment issue, which also it is not.
I have stuff on many could servers throughout the world and there’s no trademark prohibiting from saying I use Amazon S3 as one of them. Nor can anyone restrict my commenting about the service name, its quality, or how much I love it (I do). That means it’s not a 1AM topic either.
Can Nintendo do [their usual threat stuff]? Yes. Should we take it as a given and debate the minutae? NO!!! They have no trademark case, and no 1AM case. People are free to speak about it. Today at any rate.
Ehud
#Nintendo suck, its servers suck, no law violated by this line.
Re: Re: Re:
Projecting much? Pretty much everything you just said there is wrong.
You’re the one saying this is about trademarrk, not me, your initial word salad was pretty much an about how there wasn’t a trademark on hashtags, and therefore Nintendo doesn’t have a case.
Guess what…
They don’t need a case… this is all happening on Nintendo’s own servers, where the first Admendment allows them pretty much free rein to take down any thing and every thing, for any or no reason at all..
Their stated reason here is hashtags that name drop another server,, Nintendo considers it advertising for that other server, and they don’t want that on their server…
So they took it down… and doing so, was all in house, someone just sent a note on internal Nintendo email and said “nuke that shit” , and it was done, and it’s something that they have a perfect right to do.
The only way this gets into the court is if you want to sue them over banning disfavored octorhorpes posters from their own servers
Good f*cking luck with that one…
Section 230 will kill it dead, and if by some miracle that didn’t happen the 1A is right behind it to leave the case DOA
The -only- legal case there might be is suing the original cheating troll for falsely reporting then, but that won’t involve Nintendo, or Trademarks
Re:
Your AI agent seems to hallucinating the article it is responding to.
Haha.
Nintendo fans are like Trump fans. Cult idiots I laugh off for getting screwed over. Why? Because Nintendo has made it clear they HATE their customers.
FTFY. This is something Nintendo is doing to its own customers on the say-so of internet trolls.
I cant wait to speed run the latest takedown simulator by Nintendo
Sounds like some doofus at Nintendo literally wrote their report function to start doing automatic takedowns after a certain number of reports for the same thing from different accounts.
Which, as any social media company can tell you if they’re serious (aka not Twitter, TruthSocial, etc).
This is a bad idea.
“Nintendo has a choice.” Yes, but not for either of the two unlikely items the author lists. The real choice is, do they keep doing what they’re doing (ignoring the chaos of their automated “moderating”), or do they shut down Mario Maker entirely because allowing users to post anything at all to their servers is just too much trouble.
Nintendon’t lets Trash mario maker levels stay on their Servers.
But creative Levels from a team called “The Banned Wagon.” Ban. Do NOT let anyone have FUN. Why? Because, it’s a Glitch.
Will Nintendon’t FIX The Glitch? Nope. But delete maps that have Fun and unique things.