The iconic 20-year-old title Garry’s Mod has become the focus of a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) block on Nintendo content.
The creator of the legendary PC gaming classic Garry’s Mod is caught in a mystery. It all started with an alleged takedown notice from Nintendo, which piqued the interest of social media experts and laid the foundation for (another) DMCA saga.
Garry V Nintendo
This has led to Gary Newman, the game developer and owner of Garry’s Mod, posting on Steam about the decision to begin removing Nintendo-related content.
“Some of you may have noticed that certain Nintendo-related Workshop items have recently been removed. This is not a mistake; the takedowns came from Nintendo,” he said in a post on Steam.
“This is Nintendo’s content and what they allow and what they don’t is up to them. They don’t want you playing with this stuff in Garry’s Mod – that’s their decision, we have to respect that and remove as much as possible.”
A group of disgruntled Garry’s Mod fans rummaged in the background because they believed the DMCA was wrong. Newman then posted on X to his community, trying to understand the note and its origin:
Yes, we have received your emails and DMs, we have seen your messages, we are conducting our own investigation. We need to take these things seriously (especially from Nintendo), but we also can’t let people abuse DMCA takedowns.
– garry (@garrynewman) April 25, 2024
Newman said: “I have been assured that the shutdowns have been confirmed by Nintendo as legitimate, so this will now proceed as planned.” Sorry. 🫸🍄🗑️.”
Who is Aaron Peters?
Some fans then brought a mystery man into the mix, saying that the takedown came from a prominent troll: “It’s not Nintendo, it’s Aaron Peters,” several said Posts. Therefore, the community has questioned the validity of the move when it concerns Nintendo.
Aaron Peters’ name was recently linked to a slew of “Nintendo” DMCAs on Reddit, and you can read that thread for yourself below.
“Aaron Peters”, the destroyer of add-ons
byu/Ghostlarica3218 ingmod
Newman’s next post would be angry, expressing frustration that some fans don’t believe this was Nintendo’s order to destroy the contents of Garry’s mod:
I have a few legitimate questions for the It’s Fake people. There are a lot of walls of text and 900 page Steam forum threads that I won’t read through. Please help me understand.
1. If the only big clue that these are fakes is the email domain “https://t.co/M9IBT1de8C”, why…
– garry (@garrynewman) April 25, 2024
He said: “I have some legitimate questions for the fake guys. There are a lot of walls of text and 900 page Steam forum threads that I won’t read through. Please help me understand.”
As we reported, Nintendo is actively committed to combating piracy and has targeted the Yuzu Switch emulator. The saga ended with $2.4 million after several attempts to kill the emulator and its extensive ROM library.
Nintendo has not yet made an official statement regarding the takedown or the DMCA.
Newman seems exhausted by the debate, but his Steam post seals the fate of Nintendo-inspired mods by saying: “This is an ongoing process as we have 20 years of uploads to go.” If you’d like to help us, deleting your Nintendo-related uploads and never uploading them again would help us greatly.”
Image: Ideogram.