Popularity. Most of the time, in the real world, it’s cut and dried. You get a lot of party invites, and that means you’re popular. You can’t ever get a date, and that means you may not be.

In the virtual world, it’s not that simple. Mario Maker custom levels are subject to being pulled from Nintendo‘s server due to a lack of popularity, but it seems they haven’t exactly been clear about what that entails.

Kotaku‘s Patrick Klepek theorizes, as one would, that “it’s reasonable to assume Nintendo is referring to number of plays, completion rate, and stars.” Yet he has also collected numerous reader comments from users whose attempts to tweak their less popular levels and re-upload them have been met with the full-on ban hammer from Nintendo.

Now, it’s possible said users have run afoul of other issues–one used the word “shroomed,” which (deliberately or otherwise) emphasizes the mushroom-hallucinogen connection that Nintendo would rather not have associated with a family-friendly product, even though every damn one of us who ever played Nintendo in college has mentally made it years ago. The point is, the big N isn’t clearly communicating WHY to the levels it’s banning.

Granted, even the biggest big company can’t answer every consumer’s every issue. But until they’re a little bit clearer, it looks like speculation will run rampant, and your answer will always be in another castle.

Is Nintendo under-serving the fans? Are the architects of arbitrary madness in the Mushroom Kingdom simply asking too much of their O.G. world builders? And have you had a level memory-holed down the nearest giant pipe?

Fire-flower away in comments and let us know.

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h/t Kotaku

image via the original Mario Maker level designers at Buena Vista Pictures