An indie parody of No Man’s Sky, which repurposes the game as a 2D Mario platformer, has been subject to a copyright notice on behalf of Nintendo’s lawyers. The portmanteau sci-fi side-scroller, No Mario’s Sky, was launched on itch.io last week, but was hit by a DMCA notice over the weekend. Rather than pull the game entirely, developer ASMB Games has cheekily rebranded it DMCA’s Sky instead.
The game – which was built in 72 hours for the Ludum Dare 36 game jam – follows Spacemen Finn’s search for Princess Mango across an “infinite universe”.
“We represent Nintendo of America Inc. (“Nintendo”) in intellectual property matters,” the notice from Nintendo’s lawyers, sent to itch.io on Sunday, reads. “Nintendo recently learned that content available at https://asmb.itch.io/no-marios-sky infringes copyrights owned by Nintendo. This notice is provided pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 USC § 512, and itch.io’s Terms of Service.”
The DMCA takedown notice then lists the infringements on Nintendo’s copyright:
- Mario character
- Super Mario Bros.
- Super Mario Bros. 2
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Super Mario Land
- Super Mario World
- Super Paper Mario
- Super Mario 64
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Super Mario Kart
- Mario Party 8
- New Super Mario Bros.
The developers of No Mario’s Sky then posted the following update:
“NO MARIO’S SKY IS NO MORE-IO!
Due to a copyright claim by Nintendo we’ve had to take the game down.
Please check out our new game: DMCA’s Sky.
Thanks everyone for playing and enjoying our little fan game. We would love to see an official Nintendo game in this style — a Mario Galaxy-style game in 2D within a procedurally-generated universe.”
Nintendo is on a roll when it comes to shutting down fan games; No Mario’s Sky is but one of over 600 games taken down by the Japanese company’s lawyers over the last few days. While the files for No Mario’s Sky have been suspended, the game’s new iteration, DMCA’s Sky, can be downloaded here.
