As reported earlier this week, Nintendo has been issuing large waves of copyright blocks against a popular and exhaustive video game music archive on YouTube. GilvaSunner has been around since 2010, amassing 467,000 subscribers.
After losing around 1300 videos from their channel in the first wave of copyright blocks, GilvaSunner tweeted a list of the games involved.
GilvaSunner took to Twitter again today, announcing a further 2200 blocks had been issued. And then the bombshell: Gilva felt the time had come to close their account for good. You can read the full thread below:
Hi everyone, after the 1300 copyright blocks from Nintendo a few days ago, the YT channel received another 2200 blocks today (with likely many more to follow).
— GilvaSunner (@GilvaSunner) February 1, 2022
“After thinking about this a lot over the past few days, I’ve decided that at this point it’s not really worth it to keep the channel up any longer,” reads the post, “and will therefore delete the GilvaSunner YouTube channel (or what’s left of it) this coming Friday.”
If GilvaSunner was angry about the situation, they kept it to themselves. Rather, their tone seemed sad but reflective about the decision. “There are many different opinions over what is happening and that’s fine! I can understand pretty much all sides. I know this is disappointing to read for a lot of you, but I hope you can respect my decision to want to move on at this point.”
They ended the thread with a request. “It’s been truly amazing to see the VGM scene grow so much! Please keep supporting the composers and community!”
Nintendo has been issuing takedowns and copyright blocks on the GilvaSunner channel for many years, but this recent wave is the biggest hit the channel has ever taken. It seems Nintendo finally got what they wanted and has driven Gilva off the platform for good.
GilvaSunner says their videos were not monetised. They insist they have never profited from them.
As Zack wrote in his piece from earlier this week, Nintendo is well within its legal right to issue takedowns on its copyrighted content. It is, however, disappointing that Nintendo won’t collaborate with its community on this. Perhaps the situation would be different if Nintendo had ever made music from its games legally available on streaming platforms, but it hasn’t. So it’s frustrating to see Nintendo throw its weight around like this when it offers no legal alternative.
Perhaps the copyright wave portends a change from Nintendo. Maybe it’s looking to finally release its music legally and is cleaning house in preparation. If it is, it hasn’t communicated that, and so it’s hard for many to see Nintendo as anything but the bad guy here.
Cheers, GilvaSunner. It was fun while it lasted.
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