Fan builds Pokémon shooter: players love it, Nintendo blocks it

A developer’s project has now been removed from Twitter and YouTube. In 30 days he built a first-person shooter where you shoot at wild Pokémon. Even with boss fights. Nintendo didn’t think it was funny at all.

What happened? A few days ago, a gameplay video went viral in the gaming community. This showed a first-person shooter in Unreal Engine 5, in which the player shot at Pokémon like Pikachu or Mewtwo with assault rifles and shotguns.

Some viewers of the video found it horrifying to shoot at the cute Pokémon. On the other hand, they were also curious and wanted to try it out for themselves. But the game was never intended for publication. And yet Nintendo intervenes.

Nintendo reports copyright infringement

What was that shooter? The developer, who calls himself Dragon on Twitter, worked on the shooter for about 30 days. The first-person shooter is part of his project, where he wants to develop something new with Unreal Engine 5 within a month. He took templates from the Unreal Engine for weapons and environments and built in “real” Pokémon as opponents.

So you could meet Pokémon like Arbok in the wild and shoot them. There were also boss fights against legendary Pokémon such as Mewtwo or Arktos. The bosses had more life points than the Pokémon in the wild and also had special attacks that players had to dodge. Within days, gameplay videos exploded. The video garnered over a million views on Twitter alone.

The developer showed a gameplay video on Twitter. On YouTube, he shared a documentary about the game’s development, including gameplay. In the documentary, Dragon explained that the game isn’t intended for release, joking, “Please don’t sue me Nintendo.”

This is how Nintendo reacted: The fan project was shot down by Nintendo with “copyright strikes”. Gameplay videos are no longer available on Twitter and YouTube and have been removed. Instead, the message “This media has been disabled due to a notice from the copyright owner” appears on Twitter.

However, gameplay hasn’t gone everywhere just yet. You can still see the video on reddit. Even if the thread has already been removed by the moderators:

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Nintendo is once again cracking down on this. According to the developer, the project should never be released. It was his project that he shared gameplay videos of with the community. After the many positive responses, Dragon developed a boss fight against Lugia, and the video was also blocked.

How are the players reacting? On Twitter, one reads sentences like “You develop fast, but Nintendo’s copyright department is faster” under the blocked videos. Among the first gameplay videos, many players warned that Nintendo will probably react quickly. A user writes (via Twitter): “I see you followed the WikiHow article ‘How to get contacted by Nintendo’s legal department in 10 steps’.

This feedback and concerns are related to the fact that Nintendo is known for taking action against such unofficial fan projects.

Only recently did the story go through the gaming community. The artist raised €270,000 for hand-painted guides to Nintendo classics like Zelda and Metroid. Nintendo sued and scrapped the artist’s project.