Summary
Relic Castle, a popular website dedicated to creating and curatingPokemonfan games, has been taken offline following a DMCA. The long-runningPokemonfranchise has inspired plenty of creativity among its legions of fans over the past few decades, from impressive artwork of creatures like Pikachu and Eevee to fan-made spin-off games that place the series in genres that likely wouldn’t be explored by Game Freak. This includes mods that addPokemoncharacters to other video games likeMinecraftand customPokemongames that recreate Ash Ketchum’s journey in thePokemonanime.
Unfortunately for the people behind thesePokemonfan projects, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are notoriously protective of its IP, and this has led to the company shutting down certain fan games over the past few years. In 2022,video clips of a fan-madePokemonFPSwere taken down after threats of legal action by the Big N. More recently, The Pokemon Company ordered that aPokemon-themedPalworldmod be removed, though it would later be reinstated after the creators altered and renamed its character models to look less like the copyrightedPokemoncharacters.
Relic Castle could be the latest casualty of The Pokemon Company’s growing crackdown onPokemonfan games, as the popular site has been taken offline. This news was announced in a message on the Relic Castle Twitter account earlier this week, which stated that the site was taken down following a DMCA notice. The message didn’t specify ifThe Pokemon Company was behind this copyright notice, but the creators expressed regret that Relic Castle had been shut down just as it was about to celebrate its 10th anniversary. While the website itself is no longer online, the Relic Castle Discord server will remain active, and Relic Castle can still be accessed as an archive through the Wayback Machine.
Pokemon Fan Game Website Relic Castle Is No More
Relic Castle was originally set up in 2014, and included a forum dedicated to discussing andcurating popularPokemonfan gamesalongside a directory that allowed curious players to try them out for themselves. Over the following decade, the non-profit site built a community of over 20,000 forum members with upwards of 65,000 posts. The website itself was fittingly named afterPokemon Black and White’s Relic Castle, an ancient ruin in the Unova region that serves as the home of legendary Pokemon like Volcarona.
It isn’t clear if The Pokemon Company was responsible for the DMCA notice that led to Relic Castle being shut down, nor if there was any reason for it aside from theuse of thePokemonIP. Earlier this month, a former lawyer at Nintendo explained that the company usually pursues legal action if a fan project gets attention from the press and starts to make money off thePokemonlicense. While Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are certainly within its legal rights to take these actions, the recent crackdown onPokemonfan games has left a bad impression on certain members of the community who enjoy projects featured on websites like Relic Castle.
Pokemon
Pokemon is a franchise that needs no introduction. One of the most successful media empires in history, Pokemon spans games, television, films, manga, merchandise, music, and more.
