Pokémon Essentials was the number one tool for fans hoping to create their very own Pokémon games, including the likes of Pokémon Uranium. Unfortunately, the tool has now been completely shut down by Nintendo, meaning it is no longer available to download.

First created in 2007, Pokémon Essentials became popular amongst amateur game developers due to its ease of use - fans had access to all manner of pre-built assets like sprites, maps, tilesets and music, which they could easily drag and drop into place, with Pokémon's RPG mechanics already built into the interface. Hundreds of thousands of people downloaded the tool, with some even adding to it with their own custom resources.

However, Nintendo has since claimed copyright infringement, demanding take-downs of not just the tool itself but also the Wiki, essentially scrubbing any trace that it ever existed. A representative from Fandom, the company that hosted said Wiki, stated “Fandom received a DMCA notice on behalf of Nintendo notifying us of content that was in violation of its copyright holdings. After carefully assessing the violations in regards to the Pokémon Essentials wiki, we came to a decision to take it down.”

This might no necessarily be the end of an era, though. One developer told The Verge that the Wiki will likely live on in some shape or form, but many of the more organized entities are definitely going to shy away from ... building out new things for the kit.” They even added that it was likely "impossible" for Nintendo to completely erase the tool from the Internet since so many people have already downloaded it.

“[The shuttering of] things like Uranium, Prism, etc., all made sense because they got too big,” they said. “We’ve always known this day would come, some are surprised it took so long. But people are going to continue to make fan games, whether there’s a Wiki and support or not.”

Nintendo is no stranger to issuing take-downs of beloved fan-projects. The aforementioned Pokémon Uranium was forced to be taken down only a few days after its release, and they did the same thing to a fan remake of Metroid II. While Nintendo does have the legal right to do this kind of thing, they have received mostly negative buzz from these actions since the people who make these games don't make any money out of them. It doesn't help that other fan-games based on existing IPs like Sonic the Hedgehog aren't subjected to the same scrutiny. In fact, some of these fans' work led to them getting to work on Sonic Mania.

Game Freak's own Junichi Masuda, in the wake of Uranium's take-down two years ago, acknowledged the existence of fan-games and extended something of an olive branch to would-be developers. It's unlikely, however, that he had any say on the take-downs but it might be a comfort to know that he's not against the creation of these projects.

This certainly won't be the end of fan-games in their entirety, but with Nintendo cracking down on them harder than ever, it's certainly going to be more difficult for those who want to express their love for their favorite Nintendo franchises in this manner.

Source: The Verge