Legendary 20-year-old title Garry’s Mod has become the center of a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown of Nintendo content.

The creator of the iconic PC gaming classic Garry’s Mod has found himself in the midst of a mystery. It all started with a takedown notice reportedly from Nintendo, sparking the interest of social media sleuths and setting the stage for a(nother) DMCA saga.

Garry V Nintendo

This has resulted in Gary Newman, the game developer and owner of Garry’s Mod posting to Steam about the decision to start removing Nintendo-related content.

“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,” he said in a post on Steam.

“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.”

A group of disgruntled fans of Garry’s Mod would dig in the background as they believed the DMCA to be false. Newman then posted on X to his community trying to make sense of the notice and its origin:

Yes, we have got your emails and dms, we have seen your theads, we’re doing our own investigations. We need to take these things seriously (particularly from Nintendo), but we also can’t let people misuse DMCA takedowns.

— garry (@garrynewman) April 25, 2024

Newman said “I have been assured that the takedowns have been verified by Nintendo as legit, so this will now continue as planned. Sorry. 🫸🍄🗑️.”

Who is Aaron Peters?

Some fans then introduced a mystery man into the mix, saying that the takedown came from a prominent Troll: “It’s not Nintendo, it’s Aaron Peters,” said multiple posts. So, the community has questioned the validity of the move if it is Nintendo.

The name Aaron Peters has recently been linked on Reddit to a whole host of “Nintendo” DMCA’s 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 irate and show his frustration at some fans not believing this was Nintendo’s order to shatter the content on Garry’s Mod:

I’ve got some legit questions for the it’s fake guys. There are a lot of walls of text and 900 page steam forum threads that I’m not gonna read through. Please help me understand.

1. If the one big tell that these are fake is the email domain being “https://t.co/M9IBT1de8C,” why…

— garry (@garrynewman) April 25, 2024

He said “I’ve got some legit questions for the it’s fake guys. There are a lot of walls of text and 900-page Steam forum threads that I’m not gonna read through. Please help me understand.”

As we reported, Nintendo has been active in rooting out piracy, taking aim at the Yuzu Switch emulator. The saga came to a $2.4m close after multiple attempts were made to eradicate the emulator and its extensive library of Roms.

Nintendo is yet to make an official statement surrounding the removal or the DMCA.

Newman seems exhausted by the debate, but his Steam post seals the fate of Nintendo-inspired mods, saying “This is an ongoing process, 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.”

Image: Ideogram.