'Did You Know Gaming' Pulls Off The Near-Impossible, Beats Nintendo In Copyright Claim

Recent history suggests that whenever Nintendo's legal team steps in to shut down any creation made by its fans – whether that be a game, product or tournament series – that's the end of that. However, in a rare win for the little guy, the YouTube channel Did You Know Gaming? (henceforth DYKG) was able to take on Nintendo and win.

In October, the gaming ephemera-focused YouTube channel posted a video about a lost Legend of Zelda pitch called Heroes of Hyrule, a tactics spin-off of the Zelda series which would have been created by Retro Studios for the 3DS.

In December, Nintendo issued a copyright strike on the video and had it taken down. DYKG told its followers they believed Nintendo did this in an attempt to silence coverage it didn't like.

Let @NintendoAmerica know what you think. pic.twitter.com/o9FM8ytey0

— DidYouKnowGaming (@didyouknowgamin) December 8, 2022

DYKG then said it planned to fight the copyright claim on the basis of fair use. As channel owner Shane Gill tweeted, when a DMCA is challenged, the party that filed it has 10 days to take the party that challenged it to court. This essentially made Gill spend his Christmas refreshing his email to see if Nintendo was suing him.

When you counter a DMCA on YouTube, the company who DMCA'd you has 10 working days to show that they've taken legal action against you, or the video is restored. So I spent the past two weeks checking my email to see if Nintendo was sueing me.

How was your Christmas LOL https://t.co/f0pjy8Vk4W

— Shane Gill (@_ShaneGill_) December 29, 2022

Nintendo has not filed a lawsuit yet, and YouTube restored the video on December 28th. The prevailing thought at the moment is that Nintendo will likely not seek out a lawsuit and issued the copyright claim as a "scare tactic," though time will obviously tell if that is indeed the case.

We won.

The Heroes of Hyrule video is back up: https://t.co/2EHx2jjhha https://t.co/UiIIb6LA49 pic.twitter.com/gUV5wadgB6

— DidYouKnowGaming (@didyouknowgamin) December 28, 2022

I doubt they will sue as it’s expensive, most companies just spam these to scare people. Let’s hope this is over with!

— DansGaming (@Dansgaming) December 29, 2022

For the moment, the DYKG saga is a rare case of a small-ish creator taking on the Nintendo machine and winning, a standard that surely many hope will continue through 2023.