Garry’s Mod ordered to remove all Nintendo content from Steam Workshop

Garry’s Mod developer Facepunch Studios has been ordered to remove all Nintendo related items from the Steam Workshop.

In a statement on Steam, the developer confirmed the takedown notice is “not a mistake” and came from Nintendo, seemingly referencing fraudulent claims from back in February.

“Honestly, this is fair enough,” reads the statement. “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.”

However, with 20 years of uploads to go through, this will be an “ongoing process”. The developer has asked modders for help by removing any Nintendo related uploads.

Garry’s Mod is a physics-based sandbox that allows for mods and user-generated content. This, inevitably, has led to Nintendo-related content created by players.

Searching on the Garry’s Mod Steam Workshop, there are 1262 entries for “nintendo”, 5532 for “mario”, and a staggering 18,254 entries for “animal crossing”.

Nintendo is notoriously strict on copyright takedowns, though it’s certainly surprising it’s taken so long in this instance. Perhaps that’s due to the huge popularity of the tool.

Still, there’s precedent of Nintendo ordering the removal of content from Steam.

Back in January, a playable build of a Portal N64 port was removed at Valve’s request due to concern about its dependence on “Nintendo’s proprietary libraries”.

Last year, meanwhile, Nintendo issued Valve a DMCA notice over the popular Dolphin emulator that was available on the Steam store.