Power Moon Recomp and other fan PC ports vanish from GitLab and GitHub, cause unknown

The original pages of Power Moon Recomp (Super Mario Odyssey) and Project Dream (Sonic Dream Team) are gone from GitLab, and SkyRecomp's GitHub repository is offline too. No takedown notice has been made public, and many other recompilations are still up.

Several high-profile fan PC ports disappeared from their code hosts this week, and the r/decomps community quickly started asking whether GitLab had turned against recompilation projects. What can actually be checked is narrower than the rumour.

The original GitLab project of Power Moon Recomp, the native PC recompilation of Super Mario Odyssey that went public at the start of November, now returns a "page not found" error, and so does the account that hosted it. The release page of Project Dream, Beatz's tool that runs the Mac version of Sonic Dream Team on Windows and Android, is gone as well. On GitHub, the repository of SkyRecomp, the Skyward Sword HD recompilation, is also offline. TheGamer adds two more Nintendo projects to the list: Project Tandem (Mario Kart: Double Dash) and MTF-Recomp (Mario Tennis Fever).

Sonic racing through the Dream Factory stage of Sonic Dream Team running through Project Dream

What is known about the cause

Very little. Neither GitLab nor Nintendo has said anything about these projects. GitHub publishes every DMCA notice it acts on, and Nintendo's November notices there target Switch emulators, modchip firmware and an emulator compatibility list, not recompilations. GitLab only publishes yearly totals, so a removal there carries no public reason. The Power Moon developer said on Reddit that they could not explain what happened and would not fight it.

An analysis by Held Games points out that whole accounts disappeared, not just projects, which fits an account closure as well as a legal complaint. From the outside the two look the same.

Link in his Skyloft room in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD running through SkyRecomp

Not a purge, for now

A search of GitLab today still finds dozens of recompilation projects, including several copies of Power Moon Recomp uploaded by other users and recompilations of games from other publishers. Nothing points to GitLab removing the whole category, even if the Reddit thread shows how nervous developers of Nintendo-based projects have become.

Why it matters

Recompilations and ports like these contain no game data: each one needs the player's own copy of the game to run. That has not stopped rights holders from going after fan projects before, and it is one reason why the scene keeps watching where its projects are hosted. We will follow up if GitLab, Nintendo or the developers say more.