If you’ve had a course disappear from Super Mario Maker with very little explanation as to why, you’re not alone. The guidelines that released alongside Super Mario Maker that pertain to deletions have always been rather unclear and Nintendo’s updated Mario Maker Guidelines don’t do much to change that. On the support page for the question, “A course I uploaded seems to have disappeared, where did it go?” Nintendo has outlined four guidelines for why they delete courses.
First, levels get deleted when they aren’t played much or haven’t been starred. After a fixed period of time, levels are automatically deleted from the server. This isn’t new and it’s been the way the game works since launch. The problem with this is that there is no concrete timeline for when the levels will be deleted, and Nintendo hasn’t fully outlined the conditions for deletion, making some people angry that their courses are disappearing.
The updated terms state that Nintendo can delete any course from Course World with content which it deems inappropriate, but there’s not a whole lot of detail on what that content is. It could be anything from re-creating classic Mario levels to writing the word “BOOBS” in coins. These guidelines are pretty unclear and it’s obvious from the number of people upset about their courses being deleted that Nintendo might be better off with a more clear ruleset in place.
