As originally reported by Automaton, Nintendo has been wiping hundreds of Super Mario Maker 2 levels from its Nintendo Switch servers over the past few days, as said levels reportedly contained “advertising content.” At the time Automaton’s article was published, the number of deletions was around 300. Now, as of this writing, the community seems to think that number is closer to 1,000.
There’s a strange wrinkle to this story, however. Over the past 24 hours, the Super Mario Maker community thinks it’s found the culprit of the sudden removals: a well-known cheater by the name of MT94. But to explain the community’s reasoning, I first have to explain how Nintendo has justified the removals.
As kaizo ROM hack designer and Super Mario Maker content creator PangaeaPanga shows in their video on the deletion spree, and as several members of the community had already theorized, it appears that Nintendo is removing levels that feature hashtags and some variation on the name “TeamShell.” Team Shell is a well-known Super Mario Maker Discord server in which members can share codes for their own custom levels. My research suggests that members of the server tag their levels with hashtags such as “#TS” or “#TeamShell” if they were custom-built for the Discord server.
A #SuperMarioMaker2 level by JankPickle, https://t.co/cjF4BcgWsR, was removed for “advertising” by Nintendo. The only thing like that I saw was #TeamShell in the description; hopefully they’re not going after “Team” levels now. (The level’s from 2020 but viewer reports 6266 lol) pic.twitter.com/kRToLIxrmZ
— P̒̌͒ͥ̐̏̑sͥ̇y̔cͣ͌̍rͫ̔ȏw̾͆̇̑̍͋̆͛̈́ (@JoCr2) March 31, 2026
To be clear, Team Shell doesn’t appear to have any financial incentive for this. It’s just a fun way to associate levels with the server. Still, Nintendo has, for whatever reason, deemed this advertising, but why exactly has Nintendo opted to start removing these levels now? After all, some of the deleted levels are over seven years old, and Super Mario Maker 2 hasn’t received an update since February 2024.
As spotted by one user in a separate Super Mario Maker Discord server, one user decided to take credit for reporting these levels earlier this morning: someone by the name of LMT. Turns out, the YouTube account linked to LMT’s Discord profile bears the pseudonym of someone called MT94. As explained in a post on AtWiki, MT94 was, at one point, the second-highest-rated Super Mario Maker player in the world.
Turns out that MT94 cheated their way to that ranking, and they achieved this by using three separate Nintendo Switch consoles. By consistently challenging their own accounts to co-op battles in the game, they managed to boost themselves up the rankings. After the community found out and reported them, MT94’s accounts were banned.
Exactly why they’ve decided to go after Team Shell is a little murky, but the post made by LMT states they have “5 Switches reporting shxt” [sic], which lines up with MT94’s known method of using multiple accounts to game Nintendo’s ranking system. The truly sad thing is that Super Mario Maker users are also reporting that their Nintendo Switch accounts are being suspended as well, as there seems to be a sort of automatic system in place that suspends a Nintendo Switch account if it’s been associated with a certain number of reports.
Time will tell whether or not Nintendo will reverse the suspensions, but it would seem that the deleted Super Mario Maker and Super Mario Maker 2 levels are permanently gone for good, as it’s impossible to reupload a level once it’s been banned, even if changes are made to it.