The developer of Garry’s Mod has announced it is in the process of removing all Nintendo-related content from Steam Workshop after receiving a takedown request from Nintendo.
In a posting to Steam, Facepunch Studios confirmed the takedowns were in fact legitimate – perhaps in contrast to previous takedowns this year thought to be sent by a fraudster. Facepunch added that the request was “fair enough” given that the content does belong to Nintendo, but noted that the process would take time 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,” Facepunch wrote.
Nintendo has historically been extremely protective of its owned content, having in the last year issued legal challenges to Palworld Pokemon mods, a popular Switch emulator, and a Nintendo 64 Portal revival that used the official Nintendo 64 SDK. So Nintendo asking (well, demanding, really) for Nintendo-related content to be taken out of a goofy sandbox game isn’t shocking.
What’s a bit more surprising is how long it took Nintendo to actually do anything about it. Twenty years is a long time to let mods like this one that lets you fill the world with gun-toting Marios or this one that turns Waluigi into a weapon go unremarked upon! It’s not like this has been some well-kept secret, either. Garry’s Mod’s whole deal is letting people, well, mod it. You’re supposed to throw a bunch of weird characters and items and ideas together in its sandbox and make goofy scenarios. That’s what’s made it such popular streaming and video fodder.
Searching for “Mario” in Steam Workshop for Garry’s Mod at the time of this post brings up over 5,500 entries alone, and Luigi listings are at over 1,200. “Zelda” brings up 800. “Kirby” gets 739. “Waluigi” has 286! This is a gold mine we’re losing, here!
Regardless of what prompted Nintendo to start caring about this now, care they do – so say goodbye to making jumpscare horror games starring Kirby in Garry’s Mod. IGN has reached out to Nintendo for comment.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.