Super Mario Maker players are complaining that stages are being deleted without clear reason or explanation from Nintendo.
Nintendo’s general policy does make it clear they always reserved the right to do this. To quote verbatim:
Notice regarding course uploads
Please be aware that after a fixed period of time, courses with low popularity will be automatically deleted from the server.
Nintendo reserves the right to use uploaded courses and related data, either as-is or with alterations, for either commercial or noncommercial purposes without compensation to the uploader.
However, it seems that the deletions have become more conspicuous, and fans are scrambling to figure out why because Nintendo is not telling them why.
Fans believe common reasons for course deletions are there aren’t enough players who cleared it or starred it. However, there are also courses that have been outright banned, even when players try to rebuild them from scratch with improvements.
Nintendo has yet to comment on the issue, and it seems their usual glibness works against them, as it often does. Lest we forget, as early as last October, fans already uploaded 3.3 million courses. Nintendo hasn’t shared course numbers recently, but one can imagine they’ve just kept growing as it recently passed the 1 million mark in the US alone.
On my end, I think the likely reason Nintendo hasn’t been giving players notice is they may have automated the process. They may have no choice in this either, given the volume of uploaded courses. If this is the case, it would be prudent for Nintendo to improve the algorithm, and of course, to explain all this.
Nintendo may not have a choice but to automate it as well. Since the game launched, curation of fanmade levels was a perennial issue. While Nintendo has provided a stready stream of quality levels with Event Courses, and improved categories, individual level selection probably remains a big dilemma. This latter issue literally becomes a bigger concern as more stages get uploaded and demand more resources from Nintendo's servers.
Given that course deletions would be a necessity, how do you think should Nintendo best handle this situation? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
