Ubisoft Takes Down Fan’s Incredible Far Cry 5 ‘GoldenEye’ Maps

You can no longer play this GoldenEye 007 level in Far Cry 5 arcade mode. Screenshot: Ubisoft / Krollywood

In recent years, a YouTuber known as Krollywood painstakingly recreated all levels from GoldenEye 007 in Far Cry 5’s level editor. This week Ubisoft removed all of these levels from Far Cry 5 due to a copyright infringement complaint.

Kotaku first reported on Krollywood’s efforts earlier this month. Over a three-year span, in a business that has spanned over 1,400 hours, Krollywood recreated every step of GoldenEye 007, the classic N64 shooter (well, except for the two bonus levels). It was an impressive effort: a modernized recreation of an old game beloved but hard to find. And it looked great too.

Read more: Here is GoldenEye 007 remade from scratch in Far Cry 5

You can find and play these levels yourself by going to Far Cry 5’s arcade mode and entering the Krollywood username. As of this writing, you can’t anymore. Ubisoft removed them all from Far Cry 5, a move Krollywood described as “really sad”, noting that he probably won’t be able to restore them since he is “on their radar now”.

“I’m really sad, not because of myself or the work I’ve done for the past three years, [but] because of players wanting to play it or bought Far Cry just to play my levels, ”Krollywood told Kotaku in an email today.

When contacted for comment, a representative from Ubisoft rejected this statement:

Following the guidelines of the “Terms of Service”, some maps created in Far Cry 5 arcade have been removed due to claims for copyright infringement of a right [sic] holder received by Ubisoft and are currently unavailable. We respect the intellectual property rights of others and expect our users to do the same. This matter is currently with the creator of the map and the rights holder and we have nothing more to share at this time.

Ubisoft did not immediately respond to follow-up requests asking if the mentioned rights holder is MGM, which controls the license of the original GoldenEye 007.

The rights around the GoldenEye 007 game have been stuck in a quagmire for decades. Famous, Rare, the developer of the original game, planned a remake for the Xbox 360. This was canceled in 2008. (Years later, Xbox boss Phil Spencer written in chalk cancellation of legal rights issues being “difficult”.) This remake can resurfaced as full 4K60 longplay via leaked in January, with a playable version hitting online shortly thereafter. A Kotaku Report concluded: It was fun.

It’s also unclear how, exactly, the remakes of the Krollywood map in Far Cry 5 hurt MGM – or how they violate Ubisoft’s rules. Terms of use in the first place. Krollywood did not use any material or code from the original game. He didn’t try to sell it or make a profit. And MGM doesn’t own any code for Ubisoft’s open world shooter.

Gamers just want a taste of the nostalgia, and MGM has a reputation for breaking plates before they’re even delivered to the table. (Call back it golden 25, the fan remake of GoldenEye 007 completely redone in Unreal 4 which was lawyer forgotten last year.) MGM additionally neglected to do anything with the license it is based on – for a game older than the Game Boy Color, by the way. Ultimately, the filming of this latest fan-made sky project comes across as a punitive move at best.

“At first I started this project just for myself and my best friend, because we loved the original game so much,” Krollywood said. “But there are a lot of GoldenEye fans out there… [The project] I found a lot of new fans and I’m so happy about it.