Back in February, Nintendo took a very unusual step and granted access to a huge library of Pokemon Diamond and pearl‘s sound effects and music and even encourages people to use them in their own (non-commercial) projects. What a beautiful thing! So, three months later, of course it’s like that closes it.
The Pokémon DP Sound Library is an archive of music and sound effects from the 2006 game (rather than recent remakes) that actively encouraged the public to grab the tunes and use them in their own personal projects. From Nintendo, a company we are much more used to reporting on to the Stamp on tiny home brewed fan projects, this seemed like a super positive move. So the same The Pokémon Company announced record profitsNintendo is take the whole thing offline.
In view of this, the library project is surprisingly friendly in its donations We’re talking about Nintendo here. It allows people to use the music from the game as background music in YouTube videos, play it at non-commercial public events like parties and plays, or even have it play when you enter weddings.
At the same time, and unsurprisingly, this has never been the case copyleft release it could have been, and commercial reuse is not allowed. Oh, and users had better be very careful, as it also bans some pretty ambiguous purposes, including “anything that makes a specific ideological, religious, or political claim”. What, you know, everything is.
Now (as discovered by Eurogamer), for some unknown reason the whole lot is being taken off the internet. That Home page of the site now states that on May 31, 2022 at 9:00 UTC the whole thing will be gone. Maybe someone at Nintendo found out they made someone smile without charging $59.99 first, and so on cannot be tolerated.
The news goes on to explain that people can continue to use the music and effects they’ve downloaded as long as they do so “within the terms of service and policies,” which of course will be significantly harder to find once they’re removed from the site. Which should at least give their pathetic lawyers some fun in the future, when said rules are long forgotten.
Quite why such a fun and enjoyable-The featured project is set to be wiped out just three months after launch, it’s unclear. We’ve asked Nintendo what’s up and will update if they let us know. In the meantime, download the whole batch right away because it’ll be gone in the morning.
