Sega's DMCA strikes on Shining Force 3 videos

Shining Force 3 is a video game released for the Sega Saturn in 1997 to 1998. The first game is the only one to ever receive an official release outside of Japan. The series was also designed so that the true ending of the game could only be achieved if all three games were completed.

When YouTube officially launched in 2005, fans of the series began uploading walkthroughs and translations of the other two games for English audiences. Many of these videos had been up for years.

In November of 2012, Sega started taking copyright notices to uploaders of Shining Force 3 and taking down the videos, even videos that just discussed the game and didn't even have any game footage or music. The gaming news site Destructoid theorized that the reason for this was because Sega was releasing a new game in the series for the PSP for Japan in February 2013 and Sega wanted to scrub the series clean off the internet.

When the new game was released, Shining Ark, RubyEclipse, an associate brand manager for Sega of America issued an apology on Sega's forum:

Thank you to all of our fans for waiting while we worked hard to get this issue solved," noted RubyEclipse. While SEGA may need to remove videos in rare cases, we’re happy to confirm that there are no further plans to remove Shining Force videos uploaded to Youtube by users living in North American and European territories. Additionally, if you live in these territories and your video was removed, please get in touch with us at communityteam@sega.com so that we can look into it for you.

'''SEGA believes strongly in our fans and we apologize for any inconvenience. You all are what keep us going – thank you!'''

Despite the apology, not every channel on YouTube had a strike removed and some channels were terminated as a result of this action.