Yet another casualty goes down in the never-ending battle of copyright enforcement, and this time, it hit a big website which was the host for many fangames based and inspired on Pokemon, called "Relic Castle".

Earlier this week, the owner and the manager of the Relic Castle website, Marin and Andy, respectively, gave the news about the website being taken down by a DMCA notice (which according to the owners, was given by a third-party authorized by The Pokemon Company) throughout the Relic Castle Discord server, as well as through their official Relic Castle website, closing it down entirely and only giving the following message upon entering the website:

Dear Pokémon fan game community,

It is with heavy heart that I announce that the Relic Castle website has been taken down following a DMCA takedown notice.

Relic Castle has always been a non-profit, ad-free, tight-knit community and we pride ourselves in what we have achieved. Members have felt at home, made friends, and even careers with us. It is with deep regret that I have to inform you that the forum part of this community, which was to turn 10 years old this year, has had to come to an end. With over 20,000 members and 65,000 posts, Relic Castle was a home to many of us.

The Discord server is not going anywhere, and the site is still visible as an archive using the Wayback Machine.

Thank you all for being with us this last decade, and thank you for making Relic Castle as awesome and life-changing as it has been for some of us.

Sincerely,
Marin
Owner
&
Andy
Manager

This isn't the first time The Pokemon Company has taken down fan projects based on the Pokemon IP, as was the case with the highly known Pokemon Uranium fangame, and not only that, but The Pokemon Co. has been hard at work hunting down and shutting down all kinds of mods related to Pokemon in any sort of way, like the most recent case of the Palworld-Pokemon mod which was instantly taken down by a DMCA.

Both Nintendo and The Pokemon Company have been on hot waters with all their recent legal actions towards fan projects, emulation and mods, and given their aggressive legal nature, it's unlikely they are going to stop anytime soon.

Source
Relic Castle archive at Archive.org

 

[Jayro]

The DMCA is the worst thing to happen in America to digital media. Abolish the DMCA.

 

[SDA]

Another one goes down. Nintendo really wants to catch 'em all... all the fan games and mods of course.

 

[Jayro]

I can hardly wait for their new system to be emulated and pirated right out of the gate.
My only wish was that MigSwitch would have waited on release until the new system hit, so it would hopefully nail both systems to the wall at once.

 

[DragonMals]

March really is the DMCA month for Nintendo. The Nintendo Ninjas have been COOKING. Although this really is a fangame site, so I guess it makes sense for the DMCA.... It still isn't cool though.

At this point, I'm just waiting for NIntendo to go out of their hand to start DMCA'ing things that actually don't make sense to DMCA because they're on a mad roll now.

 

[Bladexdsl]

At this point, I'm just waiting for NIntendo to go out of their hand to start DMCA'ing things that actually don't make sense to DMCA because they're on a mad roll now.

when they start DMCA logos that's when they will have gone FULL APPLE

 

[Zowayix]

The correct move at this point is to make sure a hacker leaks a dump of the site, conveniently excluding PMs.

 

[ShadowOne333]

The correct move at this point is to make sure a hacker leaks a dump of the site, conveniently excluding PMs.

it's all archived from what I've heard.
And the parts that aren't, are still being heavily researched and archived by members of the community.

Thankfully, the site itself wasn't hosting the actual games directly, so it's possible that the games themselves could actually be salvaged and archived as well.
Still though, the amount of fear-mongering that both Nintendo and Poke Co. are trying to do is flat out disgusting to anyone who has been a fan or even a normal customer, they deserve the full strength the consumer has and receive a similar treatment to what Disney is getting atm.

 

[Noctosphere]

wait! what? By The Pokemon Company? Not by Nintendo?

 

[ShadowOne333]

wait! what? By The Pokemon Company? Not by Nintendo?

Second party, so might as well be Nintendo pushing them to do so.

 

[Noctosphere]

Second party, so might as well be Nintendo pushing them to do so.

i know, but usually, when Pokemon fan games were taken down, it was Nintendo's name that was used as the "DMCA emiter" right?

 

[ShadowOne333]

i know, but usually, when Pokemon fan games were taken down, it was Nintendo's name that was used as the "DMCA emiter" right?

Can't recall atm, it might have been.

 

[Zowayix]

The DMCA is the worst thing to happen in America to digital media. Abolish the DMCA.

Be really careful what you wish for. The DMCA is what made it legal to backup copies of your own games.

Second party, so might as well be Nintendo pushing them to do so.

Third party according to the official reddit post; someone other than nintendo and TPC but still real.

 

[Viri]

Pokemon Showdown be like

 

[The Catboy]

Quoting me from the other thread

Nintendo when they see their fans happy in an unapproved way

Shit like this is why I hope more games like Palworld happen

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

Thank you for your service The Pokemon Company. Protecting us from dangerous intellectual property theives

 

[yoyoyo69]

Another one goes down. Nintendo really wants to catch 'em all... all the fan games and mods of course.

Pretty humiliating, one indy game puts them to shame. Running scared of anything even remotely "threatening" to the trash pumped out with Pokémon branding I guess (not really but I like this narrative as it fits how toxic they've been)

 

[K3Nv2]

It would be nice to see partnership program instead of people just using crap without permission, say small dev pitches idea to Nintendo, Nintendo accepts, an agreement is signed pay whatever then you can legally use Ip and such in fan made content.

 

[ShadowOne333]

It would be nice to see partnership program instead of people just using crap without permission, say small dev pitches idea to Nintendo, Nintendo accepts, an agreement is signed pay whatever then you can legally use Ip and such in fan made content.

Nintendo will never do that, they have their heads so up their asses that they will never accept any kind of suggestion or pitch from small indie devs, much less unknown fangame developers.
Just look at their responses back when Federation Force came out, despite the massive backlash, they held to their idiocy all the way throughout and never bent. The same applies to other things, they've done through their lifetime, Joycon drift could be another example, despite them "trying" to mitigate it with free repairs, the issue is still there and alive to this day, even on OLED models.

 

[MrSandstorm]

Can't have those pesky community games making the 1st party shovelware look worse than it does by itself