Garry's Modpopular in 2006 sandbox the game emerged from the modding scene surrounding Valve's Source software, which was recently given a takedown notice by Nintendo. The result is Facepunch Studios, developer of Garry's Modis in the process of removing approximately 20 years' worth of Nintendo-related content from the game.
In the next update Garry's Mod'S Steam page, the developers said, “Some of you may have noticed that some Nintendo-related workshop items have recently been taken down. This was not a mistake, the removal was done by Nintendo.”
The update continued: “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 remove as much as possible.”
Even though Nintendo's litigious nature, not to mention fiercely protective of its brand image and mascot, the announcement from Nintendo came as a shock. As the update goes on to note, Nintendo content has been archived on Garry's Mod for nearly 20 years. Models of countless Nintendo mascots such as Mario has been ported to the Source Engine so anyone who plays it can enjoy it Garry's Mod right from the start. It's strange that Nintendo suddenly ordered the removal of a lot of this content, especially given the flexibility of the Source engine in Garry's Mod is a large part of the appeal behind the game, which was popularized in the early 2010s by a series of YouTube gaming personalities playing multiplayer social deduction games in Garry's Mod such as hunt And Trouble in terrorist town. Of course, you could also argue that Facepunch is sometimes one A bit too lenient about what they allow Garry's Modmakes sense of Nintendo's decision to act after all this time.
Nintendo-themed add-ons appear to have begun to be removed several months ago, although Facepunch did not publicly reveal that the company had issued a takedown request until earlier today. The process has been “ongoing” ever since, and the developers are still working to remove it all, which is an understandably Herculean task.
So much so, in fact, that at the end of the update, Facepunch joked: “If you want to help us out by deleting your Nintendo-related uploads and never uploading them again, That will help us a lot.”
