A fan-made Pokemon project set to be released soon has been apparently shut down at the behest of Nintendo's legal team, according to creator Adam Vierra.
We first reported on Pokemon Prism back in October, when Vierra released a trailer for it and allowed it to be played through a Twitch Plays Pokemon stream. Unlike fan-made Pokemon game Pokemon Uranium, Prism was to be a ROM hack, rather than a wholly original game.
Despite that distinction, it was shut down like Uranium nonetheless, according to messages Vierra posted on Twitter and Facebook. The game's website has likewise been reduced to a simple message revealing the project's fate and linking to a PDF file that appears to show a takedown request from lawyers on behalf of Nintendo. Although he lives in the United States, the legal notice references Australian law, which raised some questions about its authenticity. Vierra claims this is because the website's host is located in Australia.
On Twitter, Vierra apologized to fans and thanked them for his support, subsequently accepting blame for the situation. "I'm also responsible for this situation," he wrote. "Trailer shouldn't have been made & I shouldn't have been such a perfectionist and finish it sooner." He also pledged to do "more research into this situation," perhaps indicating he doesn't plan to abandon Prism entirely. But for now, it doesn't look like the game, which was reportedly in the works for over eight years, will see the light of day.
The developers behind the aforementioned Pokemon Uranium, also a fan project that was released for free, were forced to remove download links for the game after takedown notices were issued. The game is still available from certain places online, but the developers have since abandoned the project, which was being worked on for over nine years. It's unclear why, given Nintendo's history of shutting down fan projects, Vierra went out of his way to seek attention prior to the game's release.