Garry’s Mod developer Facepunch Studios has received an order to eliminate all Nintendo-related items from the Steam Workshop.
In a statement posted on Steam, the developer affirmed that the takedown notice is “undoubtedly not a mistake” and originated from Nintendo, seemingly referring to fraudulent claims that emerged back in February.
“Frankly, this is entirely reasonable,” the statement reads. “This is Nintendo’s content, and what they permit and prohibit is entirely their decision. They do not wish for users to engage with such stuff in Garry’s Mod – that is their determination, and we must respect it and remove as much as feasible.”
Nevertheless, with two decades’ worth of uploads to sift through, this will be an “ongoing and protracted process”. The developer has appealed to modders for assistance by requesting them to remove any Nintendo-related uploads.
Garry’s Mod is a physics-based sandbox that enables mods and user-generated content. Inevitably, this has resulted in the creation of Nintendo-related content by players.
Upon conducting a search on the Garry’s Mod Steam Workshop, there are 1,262 entries for “nintendo”, 5,532 for “mario”, and an astonishing 18,254 entries for “animal crossing”.
Nintendo is widely known for being extremely strict when it comes to copyright takedowns. Though it is indeed surprising that it has taken such a long time in this particular case. Perhaps this is attributed to the immense popularity of the tool.
Nonetheless, there is a precedent of Nintendo demanding the removal of content from Steam.
Back in January, a playable build of a Portal N64 port was removed at Valve’s behest due to concerns regarding its reliance on “Nintendo’s proprietary libraries”.
Last year, meanwhile, Nintendo issued Valve a DMCA notice concerning the popular Dolphin emulator that was available on the Steam store.
