Players Losing out on Pokemon Uranium and AM2R?

AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) and Pokemon Uranium; a pair of projects intended to pay homage to Metroid and Pokemon series respectively; were removed from The Game Awards last week. Both games were nominated for the Best Fan Game category; and both were removed, leaving only two other nominee’s left on the table.

Originally there was no official statement as to why these two games were removed; but earlier this week creator and host of The Game Awards (Geoff Keighley) explained the unceremonial removal: “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,” he said. “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.”

AM2R has already been served with DMCA notices by Nintendo, forcing the game’s removal from its download hosts. Pokemon Uranium is also no longer available for download, though developers claim this is preemptive and not a result from a take down form Nintendo.