Over 1,000 Super Mario Maker 2 levels have been deleted, and a cheater may be behind it all

Nintendo hasn’t updated Super Mario Maker 2 since February 2024, but that doesn’t mean they’re not paying attention to what’s going on with the user-generated content made for the game. As a matter of fact, Nintendo has just deleted roughly 1,000 stages from the game, and it seems like one specific player might have been behind the wave.

Nintendo doesn’t allow users to upload Super Mario Maker 2 stages that have “advertising content,” and it seems new scrutiny on that front is what’s lead to the wave of deletions. The vast amount of stages that have been yanked included hashtags for Team Shell, a Discord server for Super Mario Maker 2 enthusiasts. Nintendo’s use of “advertising content” as their reason for pulling stages with Team Shell branding is certainly a bit overzealous (Nintendo’s gonna Nintendo!), but as to why Nintendo’s making this move now, that’s a story that goes a little deeper.

While not officially confirmed just yet, it appears the deletion wave was kicked off by MT94, who was once the second-highest-rated Super Mario Maker player in the world. This reign came to an end when people found out that MT94 was using multiple Switch units to challenge their own account and artificially boost their ranking. Once other Super Mario Maker fans found out, they reported MT94’s account and it got banned.

Following that action, it appears that MT94 has gone on a revenge tour, reporting every stage he could find with the Team Shell branding. The only question is why MT94 is specifically going after Team Shell-related content, but it seems apparent that he’s got some sort of vendetta against them.

We’ll keep an eye on the situation and see if any other details pop up going forward.