According to a YouTuber, The Pokémon Company requested that YouTube remove a seven-year-old video showcasing modded Pokémon monsters in a Call of Duty: Zombies match.
On March 19, as first spotted by IGN, NoahJ456, a popular Call of Duty content creator who has over 5 million subscribers on YouTube, tweeted an image of a copyright removal strike email. The email appears to notify them that a video on their channel featuring modded Pokemon had been removed directly via a request from The Pokémon Company. NoahJ456 also tweeted a warning to other YouTubers with videos featuring any kind of Pokémon mods, telling them to “delete” or “unlist” that content “ASAP.”
“Just got a manual strike for a video I made seven years ago featuring Pokémon modded into COD Zombies,” posted NoahJ456. “Two more strikes and my channel gets deleted.”
In a follow-up tweet, responding to a user asking if the popular creator can appeal the strike, NoahJ456 acknowledged that The Pokémon Company was “technically within their rights” to strike the video from his channel. And it seems unlikely that an appeal would work. “Unless they have a change of heart (lol) the strike will stay,” added NoahJ456.
The situation has spooked some Pokémon content creators who fear that The Pokémon Company might be ramping up its fight against modded content and videos featuring the famous pocket monsters.
One creator, ToastedShoes, blamed himself and his Palworld x Pokemon mod video for causing the company to start cracking down. In January 2024, ToastedShoes uploaded a teaser of a mod that added Pokémon monsters to Palworld—a survival game commonly referred to as “Pokémon with guns.” That video was soon taken down via a DMCA claim from Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. Now, some creators are worried that Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are going “scorched Earth” and will begin nuking even decade-old videos from the internet and possibly cause some channels to be completely shut down.
We’ve seen this kind of behavior from Nintendo in the past, when it began cracking down on YouTube channels that uploaded music from Mario, Kirby, and other Nintendo games, letting folks listen to these tracks easily. Much of this music isn’t available on Spotify or other streaming platforms, so fans stepped in to provide an option and Nintendo slammed the hammer down on them.
It’s possible, but not certain, that Palworld has Nintendo and The Pokémon Company jumpy and more on the offensive legally. On January 24, The Pokémon Company confirmed it was investigating and looking into what many assumed was Palworld over its use of Pokémon-like designs. So far, there’s been no public movement against Palworld and developer Pocketpair made by The Pokémon Company, but we’ll wait and see.
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