Geoff Keighley explains the removal of fan games from The Game Awards

Within the last two weeks we saw the announcement of the Game Awards nominees and the subsequent removal of two entries for the “Best Fan Creation” category – Pokémon Uranium and AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake). While it’s pretty easy to figure out what happened, considering Nintendo is a sponsor of the event and the company pulled both fan games from the internet earlier this year, the show’s creator and host Geoff Keighley has come forward and explained the situation during a Twitch stream.

Here are his full comments (courtesy of Nintendo Everything):

“I think the big challenge that we face as a show is that everything in the show has to be legally cleared by the game companies in question. So one of the things that we go through is this clearance process where we have to get basically rights from everyone that owns the IPs of the games, but we don’t tell those companies in advance who’s nominated, and we find out together. It became clear once we announced the nominees that we weren’t going to be able to get clearance on those games from Nintendo, understandably so, it’s Nintendo IP, they’re trying to protect their IP, and those creators had sort of taken those games down. So from a show perspective, those games had been I think issued take downs, and if we include those in the show, then the show is potentially at risk for take down as well.

I think the fan creations are amazing things that fans do, and I hope that game companies and fans find ways to continue to create that content, and I would like nothing more than those creators and Nintendo to figure out a way to collaborate on content, but from a show perspective, it’s a bummer because I think those things are amazing efforts from fans, they created it, but at the end of the day, they are illegal use of IP and different game companies have different approaches to that… I think fan creations for me, we have to make sure those creations are legal creations or at least creations that are not subject to take down to be in the show. It was a bummer to see that happen, but it was something that unfortunately from a show perspective we had to remove them because we couldn’t obtain the clearance.”

Now with the removal of the two Nintendo fan games, Brutal Doom 64 and Enderal: The Shards of Order are the only nominees in the “Best Fan Creation” category. We’ll be sure to bring you the Nintendo relevant news from The Game Awards as it airs on Thursday, December 1st at 8:30 PM ET / 5:30 PM PT.

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