YouTuber GilvaSunner will be shutting down their popular video game soundtrack channel after receiving 2,200 additional copyright strikes from Nintendo.
The channel’s creator announced in a Twitter thread yesterday that they will be taking down their Nintendo music channel, “or what’s left of it,” on Friday. The move comes just a few days after Nintendo doled out 1,300 copyright strikes to the same channel. That totals up to 5,300 copyright strikes to high-quality songs from soundtracks ranging from Kirby to The Legend of Zelda to Super Smash Bros., with many more to follow.
“After thinking about this a lot over the past few days, I’ve decided that at this point it’s really not worth it to keep the channel up any longer, and will therefore delete the GilvaSunner YouTube channel (or what’s left of it) this coming Friday,” GilvaSunner tweeted. “There are many different opinions over what is happening and that’s fine! I can understand pretty much all sides. I know this is disappointing to read for a lot of you, but I hope you can respect my decision to want to move on at this point.”
GilvaSunner has been sharing Nintendo’s soundtracks on their channel for over 11 years, making all the songs from every game in the company’s catalog easily accessible for fans who could only find covers on Spotify and other music streaming services. This is because Nintendo doesn’t make any of its official game soundtracks available for purchase or streaming legally.
Nintendo first slapped GilvaSunner with numerous copyright strikes between 2019 and 2020, leading people to assume that they monetized the music videos. They clarified they have not made money from any of them, saying, “I see a lot of assumptions being made by some of you with some extreme words against me. Let me clarify again that I do not monetize videos and do not profit from them. I do realize that doesn’t justify uploading the content.” They added that they were not surprised that Nintendo blocked their videos and that if Nintendo thinks that’s the best thing to do to set an example, it’s well within its rights to shut down the channel.
