For him last monthsNintendo-related content has been disappearing from Garry Modthe physics-based sandbox game and modding platform loved by Steam players.
The source of the takedown requests presents a worst-case scenario for the community; Instead of coming from copyright trolls, the takedowns come from Nintendo itself, according to creator Garry Newman of Facepunch Studios. “I have been assured that Nintendo has verified that the removals are legitimate,” Newman said. wrote in X, adding that the moves will continue as planned. “I’m sorry.”
Facepunch has a lot of work ahead of it. “We have 20 years of loads to complete,” the studio wrote on the game’s page. steam page. “If you want to help us by deleting your Nintendo-related uploads and never uploading them again, that would help us a lot.”
Neither Nintendo nor Newman responded to a request for comment.
Nintendo’s aggressive copyright protection is well documented and widely known. The company goes after emulator creators, homemade tools, fan made gamesparodies and more; even major mod platforms Avoid hosting content that you fear may trigger a Nintendo copyright claim. Facepunch says the request to remove these items is “pretty fair.”
“This is Nintendo content and what they allow and don’t allow is up to them,” the developer wrote in its announcement. “They don’t want you to play with that stuff in Garry’s Mod; that’s their decision, we have to respect it and remove as much as we can.”
Within the Garry’s Mod community, some users make it a point to archive everything they can.
Since news broke that Nintendo was behind the removals, new add-ons have appeared in the store: content like “Fuck Nintendo” stickers or “Nintendo Office”-branded trash can reskins. It’s unclear if these new additions will also be removed.