GitLab Is Not Purging Recomp Projects. Two Throwaway Accounts Vanished and the Scene Could Not Tell the Difference

2026-11-11 · News and analysis

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Two things happened on GitLab in the last few days, and both are real.

The download page for Project Dream, the fan port that got Sonic Dream Team off Apple Arcade and onto Windows and Android, is gone. So is the page for Power Moon Recomp, the static recompilation that had people finishing Super Mario Odyssey on a PC without an emulator. Both return 404. Neither carries a notice, an explanation, or a redirect.

The conclusion the scene drew from that was immediate and reasonable: GitLab is taking down decomp and recomp projects, nobody has said why, and it is probably a DMCA. GitLab had become the place projects fled to after Nintendo cleared them off GitHub, so a purge there would be genuinely bad news.

We spent a few hours checking it, because "a platform is purging a category" is a claim you can actually test. You enumerate the category on that platform and see what is still standing.

It is not holding up. Dozens of recompilation projects are sitting on GitLab right now, including the exact ones a rightsholder would reach for first. One of the two missing projects was already back under a different name before we started looking. And the reason nobody could tell the difference between a takedown and an account disappearing is a difference in how two code hosts handle paperwork.

Everything here assumes you are playing games you already own. We do not link to game files, key files, firmware, or dumping tools, and we do not explain how to obtain any of them.

The Short Version

• Two pages really are gone. Project Dream's release page and Power Moon Recomp's project page both 404.
• It is worse than a removed project, and that is the clue. The accounts are gone too, not just the projects. Both usernames now return nothing at all.
• Power Moon Recomp did not disappear. It was re-uploaded to GitLab under two different accounts on 9 and 10 November, before most people noticed the original was missing.
• The Super Mario Odyssey recompilation is also still on GitHub. Three copies, including the original with 84 stars. Untouched.
• The old refuge is intact. One GitLab account holds 22 recomp projects, including the Star Fox 64 and Mario Kart 64 recompilations that moved there because they were removed from GitHub. All still up.
• So is the most legally exposed project in the category. A static recompilation of Pokemon Legends: Z-A and Legends: Arceus was created on GitLab on 6 November and was updated the day we wrote this.
• Nintendo was visibly filing takedowns this month. On GitHub, publicly, against modchip firmware. Not against recompilations, and not on GitLab.
• Why no reason was given: GitHub publishes every DMCA notice it acts on. GitLab publishes aggregate yearly counts and nothing per-project. On GitLab, silence is the default, not a signal.
• One real loss. Project Dream's official download page is gone and we could not find a replacement. That is a genuine problem and it is a different problem from a category purge.
• The practical upshot: before concluding a port is dead, check the account and check the other host. Most of the time it moved.

What Is Actually Gone

Being precise here matters, because the precision is what produces the answer.

Both URLs return 404, and so does something else. When we asked GitLab about the two usernames behind them, it returned empty results for both. The accounts do not exist.

That is a meaningful distinction. When a host removes content over a copyright complaint, the normal outcome is that the project becomes unavailable and the account carries on. An account vanishing entirely is a different event. It happens when an account is deleted by its owner, or terminated for breaking a platform's terms, or shut down as a repeat-infringer case. Those three look identical from outside and we are not going to pick one.

What we can say about the Power Moon Recomp page is that it was very new. It was created on 1 November 2026, carried 24 commits and nine tagged releases, and was MIT licensed. An archive snapshot from 6 November shows it healthy. By 11 November both it and its account were gone. So this was a page that existed for about a week and a half.

What Is Demonstrably Still There

Here is the part that settles it. Every one of these was live when we checked on 11 November 2026.

That last row is the one that ends the argument. If GitLab were clearing out this category, a brand-new static recompilation of two current-generation Pokemon games would not survive a week on it, let alone be receiving commits today. It is the single most legally exposed thing in the entire scene and it is sitting there in public.

The 22-project account is nearly as decisive. It exists because of a takedown: the Star Fox 64 and Mario Kart 64 recompilations were removed from GitHub and rehosted on GitLab, which is how GitLab got its reputation as the safe harbour in the first place. If somebody were working through GitLab's recomp projects, that account is the first place they would arrive. It has 22 projects on it and none of them are missing.

The Mirror Habit, and Why It Fools Everyone

So why did two pages going dark read as a purge? Because of how this scene distributes software, which is worth understanding whether or not you care about this particular story.

While enumerating GitLab we kept hitting the same projects under different accounts. Three separate accounts hosting a Fire Emblem recompilation. Three hosting Power Moon Recomp. Four hosting the Majora's Mask recomp. Over on GitHub, three accounts hosting the Odyssey recompilation, two of which are zero-star forks of the third created days apart by accounts with machine-generated names.

This is not accidental duplication. It is the distribution model. Projects in this category expect to be removed, so they propagate across disposable accounts on multiple hosts, and the community's launchers and trackers point at whichever copy currently resolves. The names on the accounts are frequently throwaway.

Two consequences follow, and they explain the whole misreading:

A vanished account costs the project almost nothing. Power Moon Recomp lost its original home and was back on the same platform within a day or two, under accounts created on 9 and 10 November. Nobody had to announce a migration. The mirrors were already the plan.

From outside, a moved project and a killed project look the same. Your bookmark 404s either way. The scene's reflex is to assume the worst, and the reflex is usually wrong, because the base rate of "that account was disposable" is much higher than the base rate of "a rightsholder came for this specific thing".

Why Nobody Got a Reason

This is the structural part, and it is the thing to actually take away from the week.

GitHub publishes its DMCA notices. When a rightsholder files, the notice itself goes into a public repository, with the complainant named and the affected repositories listed. That is why our coverage of the Switch emulator takedowns could tell you how many repositories went and on whose complaint. We were reading the paperwork.

GitLab does not. It reports aggregate figures in a periodic transparency report, which tells you roughly how many intellectual property complaints it handled in a year and nothing about any individual one. There is no public notice for a specific project, ever.

So on GitLab, "no reason was given" is not a suspicious silence. It is the only thing that was ever going to happen, for every removal, for every reason, including reasons that have nothing to do with copyright. The absence of a notice carries no information at all.

That cuts both ways and it is why we are not asserting a DMCA or ruling one out. One could have happened and been invisible. An account could equally have been deleted by its own owner, or terminated for something unrelated to any game. GitLab's policy makes those indistinguishable from the outside, permanently.

There is one more piece of context worth laying alongside this. The takedown machinery was conspicuously active this month. In early November 2026 Nintendo filed a notice that removed 144 repositories, and we know the number because it was filed on GitHub and published there. It targeted Switch modchip firmware. Not recompilations, not ports, and not anything on GitLab. When a rightsholder is working in this period, the paper trail exists and points somewhere else.

The Loss That Is Real

We do not want the debunk to bury the one genuine problem, because there is one.

Project Dream's release page was not a mirror. Several outlets that covered the port in late October pointed readers at that GitLab page as the download, and the developer had presented it as their own release channel. It is gone, the account is gone, and we could not find a replacement anywhere. We also found no statement from the developer about any of it.

That is a real gap, and it is the thing worth watching rather than the imaginary purge. A port that ran the Apple Arcade version's own code on Windows and Android, required you to supply your own game files, and had built up mod support and an achievement system around it, currently has no place to be downloaded from.

Note the asymmetry with the other case. Power Moon Recomp was mirrored and so losing an account was an inconvenience. Project Dream apparently was not, and so losing an account looks like losing the project. Nothing about the removals explains the difference. The distribution choices made beforehand do.

How to Tell a Dead Project From a Moved One

Worth having as a habit, because this will keep happening and the answer is usually boring.

1. Search the project name instead of opening your bookmark. Mirrors are rarely announced and the live copy is often the top result.
2. Check whether the account still exists, not just the project. A project 404 with a live account points at removal of that project. Both gone points at the account, which is usually the less alarming explanation.
3. Check the other host. Most things in this category exist on GitHub and GitLab simultaneously. One going dark says little about the other.
4. Check a launcher or a tracker. The community tools that aggregate these projects follow mirrors faster than any news post will, and the trackers keep a record of genuinely dead entries.
5. If a rightsholder filed on GitHub, go read the notice. It is public, it names the complainant, and it lists what went. If no notice exists anywhere, you have learned nothing, so do not fill the gap with a guess.
6. Keep your own copy of what you use. This is the unglamorous one and the only one that always works. If a port matters to you, the build sitting on your own drive is the only copy whose availability you control.

Does This Change Anything for Your Handheld?

Not today, and that is the honest answer.

Nothing was removed from the projects that actually serve handhelds. The packaged Linux builds of the Majora's Mask and Mario Kart 64 recompilations are still on GitLab, which matters because those are the files a Steam Deck owner actually uses rather than the source. The PortMaster catalogue is unaffected, since it was never hosting any of this. Our list of recompiled games needed no corrections.

The longer-term point is less comfortable. A category that distributes through disposable accounts on hosts that publish nothing is a category where availability is genuinely unpredictable, and where the community cannot distinguish a legal event from an administrative one. That is a real fragility. It is just not the same thing as a purge, and treating every 404 as evidence of one makes it harder to notice when an actual takedown happens.

What to Watch Next

1. Whether Project Dream reappears. A new mirror, a statement, or an alternative host would close the one genuine gap in this story.
2. Whether the Pokemon Legends recompilation survives. It is the canary. If that one goes while the rest stay, something has changed and it will be worth revisiting.
3. Whether any notice ever surfaces. On GitLab it would have to come from the developers rather than the host. If one of them says they were served, that rewrites this piece and we will say so.
4. Whether the 22-project account stays intact. It is the scene's load-bearing GitLab presence. Its status is a better health indicator than any individual project's.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is GitLab taking down decomp and recomp projects?

Not as far as anything observable shows. We enumerated the recompilation projects we could find on GitLab on 11 November 2026 and found dozens live, including the Star Fox 64 and Mario Kart 64 recompilations that moved there after being removed from GitHub, the Majora's Mask recomp, packaged Linux builds, and a brand-new recompilation of two current Pokemon games that was being updated that same day. Two specific accounts disappeared. The category did not.

What happened to the Super Mario Odyssey recomp?

The account hosting it on GitLab vanished, and the project was re-uploaded to GitLab under two other accounts on 9 and 10 November 2026. Three copies of the related Super Mario Odyssey recompilation also remain on GitHub, including the original with 84 stars. The project did not disappear, a namespace did.

Was it a DMCA takedown?

Nobody can say, and that is a fact about GitLab rather than about this case. GitLab does not publish individual takedown notices, only aggregate yearly counts, so no removal there ever comes with a public reason. What we can say is that the whole accounts vanished rather than just the projects, which is more consistent with an account being deleted or terminated than with a copyright complaint against specific content. Those possibilities are not distinguishable from outside.

Why does GitHub tell you and GitLab does not?

GitHub publishes the text of every DMCA notice it acts on in a public repository, naming the complainant and listing the affected repositories. GitLab reports only aggregate figures in a transparency report. So on GitHub you can read exactly what happened and why, and on GitLab you get a 404 and nothing else, regardless of the reason.

Is Sonic Dream Team's PC port gone for good?

Its official download page is gone and we could not find a replacement or any statement from the developer as of 11 November 2026. Unlike the Mario Odyssey case, we found no mirror. That is the one real loss in this story. Whether it returns is an open question.

Should I download ports now in case they disappear?

Keeping your own copy of a build you actually use is sensible, and it is the only measure that works regardless of what happens to any host. It is worth being clear about what that does and does not cover: these projects ship code and tooling, not games. They all require you to supply your own game files from hardware you own, and saving a copy of a port does not change that.

Does any of this affect PortMaster or my handheld?

No. PortMaster was not hosting any of the affected projects, and the packaged Linux builds of the recompilations that handheld owners actually use are still available. Nothing in our recompiled games list needed correcting.

Related Reading

• Nintendo's Switch emulator takedowns — what a documented takedown wave actually looks like
• The legal status of emulation in 2026 — the backdrop to all of this
• Recomp launchers and stores — the community tools that follow mirrors faster than news does
• The recompiled games list — our running catalogue, which needed no corrections
• What decompiled and recompiled games actually are — the technique, from scratch
• Decomp ports on PortMaster handhelds — where this scene meets cheap hardware
• The decomp scene's new rule on AI recreations — the other thing straining this community right now
• Games 100% decompiled, and what happens next — why these projects keep appearing

Written 11 November 2026 from the GitLab and GitHub APIs on that date. If a notice surfaces, or if either developer says they were served, this piece is wrong and we will say so in a correction rather than quietly rewriting it.