One Person’s Crusade To Erase a Rare PC Game Has Been Stopped

This week the Video Game History Foundation announced a victory: Cookie’s Bustle, an extremely rare and surreal ’90s Japanese PC game, has been liberated. For years someone had worked to erase every trace of the game online through copyright claims despite having no ownership.

Since 2022 an individual known as Brandon White, operating under the company Graceware, launched swarms of takedown notices against material relating to Cookie’s Bustle. The strikes removed posts from the cult ephemerist YouTuber ClassicsOfGame and extended to Twitch streams, fan art, ROM sites and Discord posts.

The Foundation received a donated physical copy and its page displaying the acquisition was hit with a copyright strike. VGHF investigators uncovered a network of firms and services White used, including automated services like Web Capio, and found he had created a smokescreen involving Ukie membership, even misspelling his own company as Gracewear.

Japan

cookie's bustle, brandon white, graceware, vghf, classicsofgame, copyright strike, takedown notices, web capio, rom sites, ukie