After nine years of grueling development, the fan-made Pokemon Uranium was released to the public. But it did not take long for Nintendo to catch wind, and asked for the game to cease distribution. While not an official cease and desist, the developers complied and pulled all download links to the game off their website. Before doing so, Uranium was downloaded over 1.5 million times.

Here is the full statement by Uranium developer Involuntary Twitch:

After receiving more than 1,500,000 downloads of our game, we have been notified of multiple takedown notices from lawyers representing Nintendo of America.

While we have not personally been contacted, it’s clear what their wishes are, and we respect those wishes deeply.

Therefore, we will no longer provide official download links for the game through our website.

We have no connection to fans who reupload the game files to their own hosts, and we cannot verify that those download links are all legitimate. We advise you to be extremely cautious about downloading the game from unofficial sources.

We are blown away by the response this game has received, and we thank you all so much for your outstanding support.

We will continue to provide Pokémon Uranium-related news and updates through our official channels.

You are welcome to continue discussing and sharing content related to the game on our forums and Discord, where there is a very active community.

Thank you for reading, and let’s share the love of Pokémon!

While a sad end to a game with much potential, it is simply another tombstone to add to the row of cancelled fan projects at the behest of their parent company. AM2R: Another Metroid 2 Remake was cancelled a day after their release after Nintendo filed copyright infringement. A potential launch of the now cancelled Star Wars: Battlefront 3 was told to stop production by developer Lucasarts.

However, the bright side is that the Skywind mod that will transform The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim into the third game of the series, Morrowind, has receieved the green light from Bethesda, and continues to be developed.

In case you were curious about Uranium, here is the official trailer, as a remembrance to what could have been.