Nintendo is so fiercely protective of its IP that the company’s regular copyright strikes have attained an unenviable meme status, so it came as no surprise when they hitDid You Know Gaming with a copyright strikefor a video about a “lost"Zeldagame that Retro Studios pitched towards the end of the development ofMetroid Prime 2.Nintendo ultimately passed on the game, but the 22-page document outlining Retro’s vision for a game calledHeroes of Hyrulenevertheless found its way into the hands of Did You Know Gaming, prompting the creation of the video that invoked Nintendo’s copyright strike.

Instead of taking the copyright strike lying down, Did You Know Gaming appealed YouTube’s decision to take down theHeroes of Hyrulevideo while calling on fans to letNintendoknow what they thought of their heavy-handed approach regarding a game that was unsuccessfully pitched to them nearly 20 years ago. After 3 weeks, Did You Know Gaming announced via Twitter that the video was back up, going on to say that YouTube had confirmed that the action was initiated by Nintendo.

Nintendo’s properties and characters are the company’s lifeblood - without them or the company’s strict curation of how they are handled, it could be argued that the company would not exist as we know it today. It is a well-established fact thatNintendo produces some of the most wholesome games, which have helped its hardware business thrive despite being consistently underpowered when compared to the likes of Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox consoles.

It’s unlikely that Nintendo will relax its stance on the way its properties are used and portrayed in a creative context - a famous example isAM2R,fan-made remake ofMetroid II: Return of Samus.Before getting taken down,AM2Rwas nominated for The Game Awards in 2016, along with another popular fan game,Pokemon Uranium.UsingNintendoIP in this manner could be asking for trouble, but reporting on a game that never saw the light of day in a historical context seems like something completely different.