Nintendo's Latest Takedown Order Is A Huge Blow To Steam Players

Summary Nintendo's takedown of character mods in Garry's Mod isn't surprising, given the company's protective nature over its IP.

Other characters coexist in Garry's Mod without issue, but Nintendo has a history of issuing DMCA notices.

Fan-made Nintendo content is being removed from Steam, with Facepunch Studios asking users to delete uploads.

Nintendo's latest takedown order is a huge blow to Steam players, particularly fans of the physics sandbox title, Garry's Mod. When Garry's Mod launched back in 2006 - after starting as a mod for Half-Life 2 - the idea was to give players a world in which they can freely manipulate objects and create their own stories. As time went on, other developers began adding downloadable content to the game via the Steam Workshop, including characters, items, and even new game modes such as Trouble in Terrorist Town and Prop Hunt.

Considering the popularity of some Nintendo-owned characters from IPs such as Super Mario or The Legend of Zelda, it should come as no surprise that players wanted to incorporate them into Garry's Mod, resulting in many Marios running around with guns in some surreal levels. Unfortunately, Garry's Mod's creators, Facepunch Studios took to Steam to let players know Nintendo has issued a takedown order. Therefore, all content involving Nintendo's IPs is being pulled from the Steam Workshop.

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Nintendo Has Always Been Notoriously Protective Of Its Property

Several Takedown Orders Have Been Issued To Modders

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Whereas other well-known characters are present throughout Garry's Mod without any issues, Nintendo has always been notoriously protective of its property, so the removal of its characters from a non-licensed title is unsurprising. Over the years, fans have been issued DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notices over mods or fan-made titles including characters from Nintendo titles, regardless of their popularity or size.

Nintendo even blocked The Legend of Zelda's soundtracks from YouTube in 2020, prompting backlash from fans who use the site as a music platform.

Earlier this year, many believed Nintendo would try to shut down the popular online survival game, Palworld, for its design similarities to Pokémon, despite its developer stating that legal checks had been done prior to launch to ensure there wasn't a case. The Pokémon Company did launch a copy investigation, but largely the only real consequences were fan-made mods of Pokémon characters being pulled from the game.

It's a shame that years of fan-made content is being pulled, never to be seen again, but even Facepunch commented that Nintendo's request was "fair enough" given that the content does belong to the company. It was noted that the process would take time as Facepunch has "20 years of uploads to go through" so a plea was also made to those who had uploaded Nintendo-themed content to "help by deleting [their] Nintendo-related uploads and never uploading them again."