Garry’s Mod removes Nintendo-related content due to takedown notice

The crackdown relating to Nintendo’s IP continues as Facepunch Studios announced it will be removing Nintendo-related content on Garry’s Mod Steam Workshop page. The studio revealed this is due to Nintendo’s recent takedown notice and that it will take some time until all the content has been wiped.

The announcement was made on Garry’s Mod‘s Steam page, where it released a short statement, making it clear that the Japanese video game company was the reason behind these decisions. The game’s developers understood why Nintendo sent the takedown notice and told players it would take years shifting through “20 years worth of uploads” to remove any Nintendo-related content from its workshop page.

“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. 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. This is an ongoing process, as we have 20 years of uploads to go through.”

To understand how big the Nintendo-related library is on Garry’s Mod, as of writing, if you go to the game’s Steam Workshop page and search “Mario,” there are over 5000 entries created by users, including the Super Mario Bros, replicas of Mario Kart and other Mario related maps from various games, and Mario related sound effects, just to name a few. The same can be said if you search “The Legend of Zelda,” which currently has over 2ooo entries, featuring beasts, character models, etc. Facepunch Studios asked users that if they want to help them expedite the process, they would appreciate it if they could delete their own Nintendo content and “never upload them again.”

“If you want to help us by deleting your Nintendo-related uploads and never uploading them again, that would help us a lot.”

Garry’s Mod is a sandbox game that was published by Valve in November 2006. The game has no set objectives as players can do whatever they want and manipulate them to do their bidding. As of writing, the game has over 1.8 million pieces of user-generated content made by fans, many of which are replicas of items and models from existing IPs. The Nintendo takedown isn’t the first time when Garry’s Mod had to wipe content from its game. Back in 2023, Kotaku reported that the game’s creator, Garry Newman, pondered about banning Nazi content over on X (formerly known as Twitter). This led to the decision of banning content that “celebrates the Nazis,” but will leave WW2-themed content alone and moderated.

Nintendo has a long history when it comes to takedown notices when it comes to its IP. If all of this is happening to Garry’s Mod, it will be interesting to see if other games that allow the use of UGC, like The Sims, would be next on Nintendo’s target list.