Hundreds upon hundreds of Super Mario Maker 2 levels have been deleted by Nintendo in the last few days, and the source of said deletions may have been traced to a single salty cheater.
As spotted by ResetEra user Maedhros, several Mario Maker 2 creators who are part of the Team Shell user community have been reporting that their levels have been taken down by Nintendo, and while the only reason that’s been given is a rather vague reference to “advertising”, many of these levels contain hashtags as markers of those who created them.
Given that Nintendo has a history of overzealously pursuing complaints it believes it has against its community and businesses around it, there is a pretty big chance that these deletions are being actively pursued by Nintendo itself. However, there’s another possibility.
As reported by Kotaku, a user of a particular Discord server (although not Team Shell’s) with the username LMT has taken credit for being behind the reports that led to the levels in question being deleted. It’s worth noting that some of the levels have been up for several years and haven’t drawn Nintendo’s ire, so this sudden movement seems suspiciously-timed.
According to Kotaku, LMT’s profile links to a YouTube channel that points to a user called MT94, who was, at one point, a well-respected member of the Super Mario Maker 2 community. However, when it was discovered that MT94 had cheated to reach a high ranking on the game’s leaderboards, they fell from grace.
In a (self-censored) tirade against their Discord server’s users, LMT says they will “keep going” with the deletion reports, laughing at those whose levels have been removed from Super Mario Maker 2 and pledging to “destroy everything” using the “5 Switches” they currently have set to report stages.
Using multiple Switches to achieve their goals is consistent with MT94’s previous behavior; apparently, that’s how they achieved a high rank in the first place, with multiple consoles being used to stage fake competitive battles between “users” (which were really just different accounts held by MT94).
It’s possible, of course, that MT94 is just trying to claim ownership of a phenomenon that suits their particular grudge, but the timing of the posts, together with the vehemence with which the user is posting, seems odd if that’s the case.
Unfortunately, it looks like accounts associated with deleted levels are also being banned, likely thanks to some kind of automated system that’s in place on Nintendo’s part. If you’ve got Super Mario Maker 2 levels uploaded as part of the Team Shell Discord community, you may want to re-evaluate your uploads.
