Nintendo is yet again back into its old copyright takedowns, issuing DMCAs.
This time, the affected site has been SteamGridDB, which many people have been using to create image assets for Steam and non-Steam games when added manually into it. Many more use it to link their ROMs through emulation into Steam as non-Steam games.

The Steam Grid database website has gained popularity over the years, more so due to the recent surge in Steam Deck users and their use of EmuDeck to setup their emulation libraries. EmuDeck itself provides a tool called Steam Rom Manager, which allows the user to configure their Steam image assets based on a community database that supplies all of the images detected from a specific ROM name, and from there the images are applied into Steam itself based on the grabbed images from the database if it finds a match.

At the moment, the website received DMCA takedowns for the following Switch games' images:

• Pokemon Scarlet & Violet
• Splatoon 3
• Super Mario Odyssey
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Other consoles and games haven't been affected.
SteamGridDB didn't offer any kind of ROM downloads nor links to them, the only offered material are plain images for a wide variety of games, and many of them are user-supplied and/or custom made by several users and supporters.

With this, Nintendo has started DMCA'ing websites over images.
Has Nintendo gone too far? What's gonna be next? All mentions of Mario in non-Nintendo websites getting DMCA'd?
Only time will tell.

Breath of the Wild entry at SteamGridDB
BotW Backup at Archive.org
Source

 

[SylverReZ]

Same thing that happened to DarkUmbra will also happen to GBAtemp if Nintendo goes far with their DMCA rules.

I used to go on DarkUmbra for my Wii hacking needs before they closed.

 

[SaulFabre]

I used to go on DarkUmbra for my Wii hacking needs before they closed.

Me too, it was a great forum website :,)

RIP DarkUmbra 2009-2020

 

[James_]

I was actually using this site earlier since I needed to go ahead and redecorate my Steam library after the move to my new PC - in fact I've been an asset maker on that site for a while now. I didn't even know that this happened while I was doing my redecorating lmao.

I don't even get why Nintendo would DMCA the site since... it's literally just pictures. I guess that it could be linked to emulation since... Nintendo doesn't have anything on Steam, but still. It's just pictures.

And the funny thing is the fact that they only decided to force them to remove assets for their more recent games. Everything Nintendo related that's a bit older still remains. Currently, anyway. They could come back for a round 2 and force them to remove assets from an NES game they don't bother to sell anymore. But if it's only a few recent games, then I don't know why they bothered even trying.

Also: the pages for Splatoon 3 and XB3 on SGDB are still up, but there's nothing left except for Splat3 only having an Akira reference, and XB3 only one singular icon.

 

[CoolMe]

No, anything but our own pictures!! Quick, to the lawyermobile!

-Nintendo, probably

"A delayed DMCA takedown is eventually good, but a rushed one is even better.."
- Nintendo probably

 

[codezer0]

Nintendo doing something ethically stupid by abusing the law?

Please see my pfp for my reaction to it.

 

[tpax]

Nintendo is such a garbage company. I will pirate their every fucking game. And play them on my Steam Deck.

 

[BlusterBong]

Nintendo is such a garbage company. I will pirate their every fucking game. And play them on my Steam Deck.

Nintendo does a Nintendo thing to the shock and awe of the same people who were there when Nintendo did a Nintendo thing the first time, more at 11.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

This doesn't even phase me, I'm so used to this kind of thing from Nintendo that I expect it.
They shut down that online Melee tournament, they've been taking down Steam Deck videos that reference Switch emulation, so this was the logical next step. They even took down the video of the guy who hacked his legitimately owned Game & Watch Super Mario Bros.
I guess people will just have to add icons to Steam manually for these 5 games. Not a huge deal.

 

[BlusterBong]

This doesn't even phase me, I'm so used to this kind of thing from Nintendo that I expect it.
They shut down that online Melee tournament, they've been taking down Steam Deck videos that reference Switch emulation, so this was the logical next step. They even took down the video of the guy who hacked his legitimately owned Game & Watch Super Mario Bros.
I guess people will just have to add icons to Steam manually for these 5 games. Not a huge deal.

This, but by a country mile, and the consumers (as in the people who actually buy Nintendo games/products and don't go extensivly in detail about the hardware and what crazy program you can write for it) don't care because things like this is practically just a minor footnote compared to what they actually want in Nintendo.

 

[tabzer]

Maybe they will DMCA all evidence that they have ever existed.

 

[lattechan]

>xenoblade
holy shit if I didn't know any better I would have thought they gave exactly 0 fucks about those titles judging by you know the last decade or so

 

[godreborn]

I'm legit, and even I think this is bull shit. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that it was Nintendo of America. what game have they helped on again? sometimes it seems like NoA does nothing but sit on their fat asses trying to find someone to sue or to release some laughable game on nso. they really need to get their shit together if they expect to be number 1 next gen.

 

[The Catboy]

Imagine if they invested this much energy into improving the Switch’e OFW, making games, and other shit

 

[SylverReZ]

Imagine if they invested this much energy into improving the Switch’e OFW, making games, and other shit

Honestly, they haven't produced anything great for years imho.

 

[godreborn]

Imagine if they invested this much energy into improving the Switch’e OFW, making games, and other shit

perhaps, but I don't believe for one second that most pirates would suddenly embrace ofw. most pirate because they can, there's nothing more complicated about it.

 

[iusebako]

 

[smilodon]

People already pirating Nintedo games for years : "This is unacceptable, I will pirate all their games!"

 

[DJPlace]

what the fuck is wrong with nintendo? they are becoming very strict to protect there own product's just CHILL THE FUCK OUT!

 

[iusebako]

How does GameTDB Still EXIST?

 

[lolcatzuru]

man we really cant have anything nice can we.