Relic Castle, a popular forum focused on the creation and sharing of Pokémon Fan Games, went offline without warning. The people behind the site blame a DMCA takedown notice for the sudden shutdown.
Relic Castle was created in 2014 as an online forum for people to discuss it Pokémon Fan games and may also share links to download these games from third party sites. Relic Castle never hosted any of these files directly; Instead, fan games that used a mix of new and old assets were often downloaded from places like Mediafire and Google Drive. The forums simply served as a convenient hub for links and provided a place for the community to discuss Pokémon Fan games. However, everything is gone now.
On March 21, Relic Castle tweeted Account posted a message citing that the site had been shut down “following a DMCA takedown notice.” Relic Castle did not confirm who sent the message.
“Relic Castle has always been a nonprofit, ad-free, tight-knit community and we are proud of what we have accomplished,” employees said in the release.
“The members felt at home with us, made friends and even pursued careers. It is with great regret that I have to inform you that the Forum portion of this community, which was supposed to be 10 years old this year, had to come to an end.”
My city has contacted Relic Castle for more information.
According to this news, Relic Castle had over 20,000 members and more than 65,000 posts. While the site is no longer available, the Discord server remains and is “not going anywhere.” Relic Castle staff also pointed to the Wayback Machine as a resource for people who want to visit the site in the future.
“Thank you for being with us for the last decade and thank you for making Relic Castle as amazing and life-changing as it was for some of us,” site owner Marin and manager Andy said in a message in the social media. The same text can now be found on a mostly blank page replaced Relic Castle last night.
This is just the latest salvo in the war against Pokémon Mods and fan content. Recently, a seven year old YouTube video with modified Pokémon In call of Duty was also dismantled. Some are afraid of The Pokémon Company and Nintendo –spurred on by the success of Palworld also known as Pokémon with weapons-could be take tough action to content that might have previously flown under the radar. At the moment we don’t know who ordered the closure of Relic Castle, but for Pokémon Content creators and modders, it doesn’t matter. Things are looking riskier than ever for them.
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