Super Mario Maker 2's user-generated levels are being deleted en masse by Nintendo. It's claimed that as many as 1,000 of them have been removed from the game, and the leading theory is that a well-known Mario Maker creator who was outed for cheating might be the cause of the mass deletion.
The story was first covered by Automaton after reports of Mario Maker levels disappearing started to do the rounds online. It started in the hundreds, but now seems to be up to at least 1,000 levels having been wiped from the game, some of which were created shortly after the game launched almost seven years ago.
Nintendo really just operates to the beat of their own drum.
The common theme tying the targeted levels together appears to be their #TeamShell hashtag. Team Shell is a Discord server where Mario Maker players can share their creations with other fans of the game. Those levels are tagged with #TeamShell so that they're easy for other members of the Discord server to find.
Nintendo doesn't allow advertising in its fan-made Mario Maker levels, otherwise we'd be sprinting past and jumping over pixelated Pepsi logos and McDonald's arches made...
