Recently, the devs of the long-running sandbox game Gary’s Mod announced that they received a takedown notice from Nintendo concerning all Nintendo-related Steam Workshop content. Nintendo is well known for being extremely protective of its IPs, so it was no shock to the community that Nintendo would eventually file takedown notices for the workshop content. But what was surprising was that around 20 years worth of Steam Workshop mods uploaded by hundreds of individuals had seemingly gone unnoticed by Nintendo until now.
The sheer amount of Nintendo content that would need to be deleted spans all the way back to 2004, and thus the Garry’s Mod devs are requesting that their userbase aid in removing the requested mods saying,
“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.”
For many, Nintendo mods featuring characters, maps, and items had been a staple in their Garry’s Mod toybox. The imminent removal of years-worth of content has players questioning if the DMCA is the work of an elaborate troll, despite the official demand from Nintendo. Additionally, others are aiming to preserve the mods on third-party sites and local storage to ensure that they aren’t truly lost.