A popular Pokémon YouTube channel called ‘PokéNational Geographic’ is no more after a series of copyright strikes from Nintendo.
Channel creator Elious delivered the new himself (thanks, Kotaku), confirming in a video posted on 26th April that he has 7 days before the channel is gone for good. This is in accordance with YouTube’s three-strike policy, which was quickly enacted after Nintendo of America sent four separate copyright notices across a total of 20 videos.
The videos, which were animated takes on David Attenborough nature documentaries, are alleged to inappropriately contain “content used in Pokémon video games including audiovisual works, characters, and imagery”. He claims that the only content directly pulled from were “tiny sprite roars”, while noting that other content on YouTube, including some generated via AI, have not been targeted.
Ultimately, Elious expressed willingness to comply with the copyright strikes, stating “I can’t fight this”. However, he’s understandably unset over the loss of the channel’s 100K+ subscribers, while a Patreon page launched to support his work now “under review”.
He’s also stated that he will continue to create animations for his alternative channel (which you can visit via the video above), but these understandably won’t be related to Pokémon in any way.
What do you make of all of this? Was Nintendo right to target Elious’ channel? Let us know with a comment.