Lego is no longer accepting Zelda fan submissions due to ‘a license conflict’

Lego has blocked creators from submitting Zelda designs for its Ideas programme, citing a ‘licence conflict’.

Lego Ideas allows creators to submit their own designs for possible Lego sets, which are then voted on by Lego fans.

If a set gets enough votes it will then be considered by Lego, with some then being turned into actual Lego sets and sold to the public.

However, as Brick Fanatics reports, creators can no longer submit designs based on the Legend of Zelda series.

According to the report, anyone trying to submit a Zelda idea will immedately get a message saying “we’ve already evaluated this IP and have determined that we can’t allow submissions based on it”, citing a “licence conflict” as the reason.

One potential reason for this is that Lego could already be working on its own Zelda sets, as part of its ongoing relationship with Nintendo which has led to a Lego NES, Lego Question Block, Lego Bowser and numerous Lego Super Mario sets.

However, Brick Fanatics also points out that if a creator tries to submit a design based on Mario it gets a different rejection, citing a “current third-party overlap”.

As such, it’s more likely that the rejection is because Lego can’t secure the Zelda licence, perhaps because it’s been acquired by another building block company (such as Mega, which makes Pokémon sets).

Further reading

The Lego Atari 2600 has been officially announced for Atari’s 50th anniversary

The buildable console will release in August

Previous Lego Ideas sets that were approved and have gone on to be successful include Central Perk from Friends, the house from Home Alone and the DeLorean Time Machine from Back to the Future.

Lego Ideas was also the source of the first Lego Minecraft set, which went on to spawn an entirely separate line of Lego Minecraft products.

It also led to a Sonic the Hedgehog set based on the Green Hill Zone from the original 1991 Mega Drive game.