The Pokemon Company DMCAs ‘Pokemon FPS’ fan game

Pokemon First Person Shooter was an ambitious concept: a title where players could exercise their freedom in a 3D plane, and use it to shoot and kill iconic, beloved Pokemon. Footage of the fan game hit the web in mid-January, showing off all the horror of a Pokemon FPS title in minute-long clips.

In the footage, developer Dragon_GameDev2 used a shotgun to dispatch a Pikachu, and also shot characters like Blastoise, Kabutops and Rhydon. While not particularly gory, the fan game did include cartoonish blood spurts with every callous murder, shocking fans and drawing the ire of The Pokemon Company itself.

Less than a week after it was posted, the footage began disappearing online, with clips on Twitter being hit with copyright claims, and footage of YouTube similarly being taken down.

It’s likely the popularity and virality of the Pokemon fan game that led to multiple DMCAs, as more people online discovered it, and pointed out its blatant infringement on Pokemon‘s copyright. Beyond being a simple misuse of Pokemon characters, the existence of the footage was also likely seen as a danger to the Pokemon brand.

Read: Is violence against virtual animals an ethical issue?

The further the clips spread, the more likely they were to be seen by more mainstream, or younger audiences. At first glance, the Pokemon FPS fan game appeared to be a harmless new entry in the series – but the further clips went on, the more extreme and bloody they got.

Given the vast majority of Pokemon players are young kids, The Pokemon Company’s wish to remove it from social media is understandable.

Still, the project itself remains baffling. The creator has yet to acknowledge the DMCA claims made against the game, and there’s no word on whether there’s been personal contact made by The Pokemon Company or Nintendo.

As of Dragon_GameDev2’s last tweet, it appears the game is still in active development – although given The Pokemon Company is now aware of the title, an actual release shouldn’t be expected. Most tweets referring to the project have been wiped clean, and Dragon_GameDev2’s Twitter feed now looks very bare.

It’s unlikely we’ll hear more from this project, given The Pokemon Company and Nintendo‘s widely recognised ‘hard stance‘ against fan games. While the clips posted online caused brief amusement, this may just end up as another bizarre chapter in cancelled Pokemon fan game history.