Nintendo Takes Down Fan-Made 'Pokemon Uranium' Game

Here's a helpful warning: If you're creating an homage to a famous game franchise that basically copies the game's style, and even uses the franchise's name, you might want to consider another venture. As soon as you launch the game—or as soon as it gets enough publicity—it's going to be clobbered with a cease-and-desist letter from the original rightsholder. It happened with Star Wars: Galaxy in Turmoil, and now it's happening with Pokemon Uranium.

For those unaware, Pokemon Uranium is—well, was—a fan-made Pokemon game that's been a number of years in the making. And there was a lot of work put into the game by its creators to expand upon the more traditional Pokemon gameplay. As Kotaku reports, your in-game character could actually talk to the various Pokemon you caught throughout the game, which included a brand-new roster of 150 Pokemon with customized moves (all carefully balanced, we hope).

Version 1.0 of Pokemon Uranium was released on Wednesday. Good luck trying to find it from any official source, though—Nintendo has already successfully pushed for the game's removal.

"After receiving more than 1,500,000 downloads of our game, we have been notified of multiple takedown notices from lawyers representing Nintendo of America. While we have not personally been contacted, it's clear what their wishes are, and we respect those wishes deeply. Therefore, we will no longer provide official download links for the game through our website," reads a statement from Pokemon Uranium's developers.

The Pokemon Uranium developers aren't taking down their official message boards for the game, however, so you'll still be able to connect with fellow players to chat about the unofficial homage. You might even be able to find a link (or 20) to it, since Nintendo's cease-and-desist only really addresses the game's official hosts—and the Meowth is long since out of the bag.

That said, be a little careful with what you're downloading.

"We have no connection to fans who reupload the game files to their own hosts, and we cannot verify that those download links are all legitimate. We advise you to be extremely cautious about downloading the game from unofficial sources," warn Pokemon Uranium's developers.