But that’s not what’s going on here? Nintendo is suing a mod creator who modded their actual IP into the game, and furthermore locked that mod through a paywall (Patreon), so, you know, profiting off of unlicensed distribution of another’s intellectual property

Regarding genre, yeah, nintendo has no leg to stand on, and they know it anyway. You can’t claim ownership of art styles or game mechanics, but that’s neither the article nor the situation