Garry’s Mod, a popular and long-running physics sandbox, has announced it will be taking down “certain Nintendo related workshop items” following requests from Nintendo itself.
The developer released a statement on the Garry’s Mod Steam page, reading: “Some of you may have noticed that certain Nintendo related workshop items have recently been taken down. This is not a mistake, the takedowns came from Nintendo.
“Honestly, this is fair enough”, the statement continues. “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 post has garnered thousands of comments from players. “Ah Nintendo. Always threatening to sue,” wrote one. Some commenters believe the takedown requests to be false, or not coming from Nintendo or its lawyers, but Facepunch’s statement is clear on who they came from.
Nintendo is fairly well known for its willingness to send laywers after people, so Garry’s Mod developer Facepunch Studios acquiescing to its takedowns is hardly surprising. One hacker, Gary Bowser, was ordered to pay the company £11.45million for a role he played in distributing Nintendo content without the company’s permission, a fine he’ll likely be paying back for the rest of his life.
Facepunch added: “This is an ongoing process, as we have 20 years of uploads to go through. If you want to help us by deleting your Nintendo related uploads and never uploading them again, that would help us a lot”, so perhaps players will make the moderation job easier.
Garry’s Mod was already having some problems with in-game material, with creator Garry Newman promising the studio would be “keeping more of an eye” on Nazi-related content.
