Video Games

Nintendo content to be removed from Garry’s Mod

Following a DMCA takedown notice that may have been fake

Marco Wutz

Facepunch Studios / Valve

Update (April 25, 2024, 4:54pm CEST): It looks like the DMCA takedowns forcing Garry's Mod to remove Nintendo-related content from the Steam Workshop were not fake, but came from the Japanese company itself. “I have been assured that the takedowns have been verified by Nintendo as legit,” the creator wrote. The content removal will go ahead.

Original (April 25, 2024, 10:54am CEST): Garry’s Mod has notified Steam users that it was working on removing Nintendo-related content after allegedly receiving a takedown notice from the Japanese company, which is known to be aggressive when it comes to protecting its IP.

“This is not a mistake, the takedowns came from Nintendo,” a statement said. “Honestly, this is fair enough. This is Nintendo’s content and what they allow and don’t allow is up to them. They don’t want you playing with that stuff in Garry’s Mod – that’s their decision, we have to respect that and take down as much as we can.”

The problem? There’s 20 years worth of content to sift through. Users, who’ve uploaded content related to Nintendo to the Steam Workshop over the years, are being asked to help by deleting it from their side.

However, despite the team being sure that the takedown notice came from Nintendo, there are now severe doubts about this actually being the case. It’s known that there is someone out there who impersonates Nintendo’s lawyers in order to issue DMCA takedowns on fan projects and mods with some Garry’s Mod addons having been targeted in the past. Fans are speculating that this individual is behind these latest takedowns as well and that they are fake.

Of course, this does not mean that this has to be the case – it could still be that Nintendo is actually behind the takedowns. At this point, nothing is proven.

Garry himself made a public statement as well, saying: “Yes, we have got your emails and dms, we have seen your threads, we're doing our own investigations. We need to take these things seriously (particularly from Nintendo), but we also can't let people misuse DMCA takedowns.”

For now, it looks like content removal will go ahead, just in case this is Nintendo’s work, while an investigation is trying to clarify the matter.

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Marco Wutz

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg