Guinness Issues Mass SMB Speed Run Copyright Claims

I must admit to being a pretty huge fan of competitive speedrunning and among the various games on offer, runs of the original Super Mario Bros. game will always be some of the most popular. It seems, however, that Guinness World Records is currently on something of a warpath.

Following a video posted by YouTuber ‘Karl Jobst‘ it has been confirmed that as many as hundreds of SMB speedrun videos have been copyright claimed specifically by the record-keeping company!

Guinness World Records Issues Copyright Claims Again SMB Speedruns!

While the issue has been affecting many SMB speedrunners, it chiefly came to significant note when the current (warpless) world record holder Kosmic woke up to find around 40 copyright claims on his various SMB speedrun YouTube videos.

Noting ‘Guinness’ as being the claimant in each of them, it has since come to light that various other runners have had their videos claimed by them as well. Guinness apparently thinks it now has a monopoly on YouTube Mario speedruns!

What Does Guinness Have to Say?

The initial reaction is that Guinness has been mass claiming videos as they do feature Kosmics world record run on their own YouTube channel. Playing Devil’s advocate, however, it’s also possible that while they initially only claimed Kosmics original WR run, the general similarity in the overall gameplay footage may have (semi-automatically) caused masses of other videos to be flagged as well. Which is true is entirely up to you at this point, but it could easily be either option.

The good news is though that Guinness has acknowledged this and while they haven’t given any specifics, they’re going to be massively unpopular unless they retract every single one of these claims!

Where Can I Learn More?

If you have uploaded any of your own SMB speedruns on YouTube, it might well be worth checking your channel to see if you have been affected by this. If you do, however, want to learn more about this, you can check out the excellent video below!

PS – If you’re into your speedrunning, Karl Jobst does run an excellent channel and you can check it out via the link here!