Nintendo forced two fans to take down the Legend of Zelda 3D remake they created in celebration of the game's 30th anniversary.
The Zelda 30 Tribute was created by Scott Lininger amd Mike Magee as a 3D remake of the original Legend of Zelda that can be played through any modern web browser. Apart from the 3D facelift, the game played as an exact replica from the classic game all the way through to the end of the first dungeon.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nintendo asked the two developers to take the game down under the threat of legal action for copyright infringement. "I guess Zelda30Tribute was a little too pixel perfect," said Scott and Mike. "We're sad about that, but we get it. We started this project because we love Nintendo and the joy they have given us throughout the years. From the start of development, we knew this result could potentially happen. Nintendo has every right to protect their IP. No complaints from us, we had a blast working on this tribute and made some friends along the way."
The game was played more than half million times before it was taken offline. Scott and Mike intend to make the game's source code available freely through Github after replacing Nintendo's assets so that other developers can recreate and modify it.