Nintendo takes down fan-made Rhythm Heaven remix tool

Nintendo has taken down a fan-made Rhythm Heaven remix tool.

Heaven Studio is a piece of fan-created software that lets players make their own remixes based on Nintendo’s Rhythm Heaven series of rhythm action games.

Players upload their own music tracks then choose from a selection of Rhythm Heaven mini-games and join them together, with players then controlling the action to the beat of the music.

However, because the mini-games make use of sprites and sound effects that actually feature in the Rhythm Heaven games, Nintendo has filed a DMCA claim which has led to it being taken down.

As reported by TorrentFreak, Nintendo contacted GitHub with a DMCA notice and asked for the sprites and SFX files from Heaven Studio to be removed.

Instead, GitHub removed the entire Heaven Studio repository, as well as 290 ‘forks’ (iterations on Heaven Studio made by other users).

Heaven Studio was also available on itch.io but has now been removed from there too, with the site now showing a message which reads: “This tool’s files have been suspended for copyright (or trademark) claim.”

While Heaven Studio has previously been subject to fake DMCA notices from people pretending to be Nintendo, the tool’s creators took to X to note that this latest one appears to be legitimate, but said they were working on a solution.

“Recently, the HS GitHub (and all forks) have been taken down due to a DMCA claim,” the tweet reads. “Unfortunately, looking over it, it appears that this one is real.

“This isn’t the end, though! We’re working on a plan B to shift focus away from infringing assets. More details on this soon.”

This is the latest in a series of crackdowns from Nintendo on fan-made projects, some of which use its assets.

In May the studio behind sandbox game Garry’s Mod said it would be removing 20 years of Nintendo-related uploads after receiving DMCA takedown requests that appeared to be from Nintendo.