1,400 hours for GoldenEye remake – gamer gets copyright hit

A hobby developer recreated the N64 hit “GoldenEye 007” in Far Cry 5. The painstaking work was then removed by a copyright dispute.

YouTuber Krollywood spent over 1,400 hours recreating every single level of the N64 classic “GoldenEye 007” in a Far Cry 5 level editor. Then copyright claims by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) destroyed his work, as Ubisoft removed the corresponding mod from the video game at the end of June. Now the Bond enthusiast is trying to offer his work under a different title.

Detailed recreation of a classic
For three years, Krollywood worked on the heart project and recreated the James Bond shooter Golden

 Eye 007 from scratch in the level editor of Ubisoft’s shooter Far Cry 5. Interested parties could simply go into Far Cry’s arcade mode, search for Krollywood’s name and play the painstakingly recreated hit game themselves.

A copyright strike takes the levels offline

Now Ubisoft took action in June and removed the Bond mod from Far Cry 5. In a statement to news site Kotaku, the developer said a rights holder had made claims of copyright infringement. Ubisoft did not explain which rights holder it was.

According to Krollywood, Ubisoft told the hobby developer directly that MGM was making the claims. MGM is the film production company of the James Bond films, which also owns the licensing rights for the 1995 film “GoldenEye”. The user himself had saved his work in several ways, so nothing was lost.

Seems like the GoldenEye maps on Far Cry 5 were taken down. DMCA by MGM? We don't know – may just be a false alarm for now.

I'll expand on this whenever I get more news from Krollywood or some.

There are ways to still play them on PC, again I'll expand more on this later.

— Graslu00 (@Graslu00) June 24, 2021

New name, new luck?

What exactly the copyright infringement claim refers to is unknown. Krollywood only used assets from Far Cry 5 and no direct material from MGM. Nevertheless, there is a happy ending: the YouTuber seems to have found a legal middle ground and uploaded the levels back into the arcade mode. From now on, however, they can be found under the name “GoldenCry”.

What is the game about?

The original video game “GoldenEye 007” was originally released in 1997 for the N64. It was developed by the company Rare, and Nintendo itself was the publisher. In terms of content, the game kept close to the film. Players took on the role of agent James Bond and completed a total of 18 levels. In the process, they fought against a criminal syndicate that wanted to use a satellite weapon to trigger a global financial crisis.

The title was not only considered an incredibly popular game, but also paved the way for other shooters with innovative mechanics such as stealth elements or a console multiplayer mode. The title is less well known in Germany, as the Federal Centre for the Protection of Children and Young People had indexed the game due to scenes of death and violence. German-language versions were only released in Austria and