If you’ve not heard of Toasted/ToastedShoes, the Queensland-based modder has made a name for themselves with some impressive and highly-entertaining mods and videos for popular games like Helldivers 2, Content Warning, Tekken 8 and Mortal Kombat 1, essentially “ruining” the games by inserting characters that absolutely do not belong.
It’s the latter, in particular, that has earned the creator well-deserved praise and attention, slotting characters from the likes of Toy Story, Family Guy, Shrek, Adventure Time, Halo and more into NetherRealm’s ultraviolent fighter to disturbing and incredible results. Now though, Warner Bros. has apparently had enough and, as Toasted claims, requested that all of the MK1 mods and videos be taken down under threat of the company going after the entire YouTube channel.
While it’s probably not super surprising to see a company like WB go after a channel that hosts monetised videos of mods for its games, the creator points out that this has seemingly come out of nowhere, and before now even series creator Ed Boon had been supportive of their efforts, even sharing the videos on his own social channels. It’s not a solo effort either, with a team behind the creation of the videos that have been supported by income from YouTube.
“This morning I received an IP Infringement Notification directly from Warner Brothers stating that the Mortal Kombat mods in my content ‘infringe’ on their intellectual property rights,” Toasted wrote in a post on social media. “I’ve been requested to delete all Mortal Kombat 1 videos from my channel or else they will issue copyright strikes and essentially delete my channel in its entirety.
“For over 6 months Warner Brothers have had 0 issues with people modding the game and [Ed Boon] himself has shared countless mod videos and clips praising them. The clips of my mods have over 1 billion views across all platforms that have allowed me to bring attention to the game as well as to continue supporting the team of developers I work with. My team of modders work with me on both a part time and fulltime basis and the revenue from these videos pays their wages.”
These are all the videos I've had to private, I'm sorry to everyone who enjoyed them but Warner Bros isn't really giving me a choice pic.twitter.com/AB6fop5ot3
— Toasted (@ToastedShoes) May 23, 2024
If some of this sounds familiar, you might recall that Toasted also ran into trouble with Nintendo over a mod for the then-popular Palworld that inserted Pokémon characters into the heavily Pokémon-inspired game.
Toasted has told IGN in a statement that they plan to contend the takedown request from WB, saying, “We are currently listening to and abiding by Warner Bros request to remove the videos. However we are going to contest their decision. Right now we are waiting for actual communication from Warner Bros so we can resolve the matter.”
Toasted’s videos featuring other games are still live, so if you’re keen to see Phinneas and Ferb ruin the heartfelt story of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons or get a look at Five Nights at Freddy’s featuring Geoff Keighley’s precious Muppets, you can find them all here.
