There are some games that are so interwoven with the fabric of Steam that it’s hard to imagine the platform without them. Garry’s Mod is one, an anything-goes sandbox that’s formed the backbone of the Steam Workshop from its inception. Famously a hodge-podge made up of various pieces of user generated content, its developer is now working to remove 20 years of Nintendo items from its workshop.
It’s hard to really sum up exactly what Garry’s Mod is simply because it combines so much under one roof. It’s a sandbox, it’s a modding tool, it’s a co-op game, it’s an FPS game. It’s all of them and none of them and its freeform ability to add almost anything from total conversions to simple asset packs via the Steam Workshop has seen players upload plenty of items and characters from other properties.
One company seems to have had enough and has issued a takedown request to developer Facepunch Studios. In a post titled Nintendo stuff on Steam Workshop, the developer states that it will be removing everything related to the Japanese powerhouse.
“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,” Facepunch Studios says. “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 take down as much as we can.”
This doesn’t seem to be an easy task for the company, however, as there’s over 20 years worth of uploads to sort through and remove. As a result, the developer has made a small plea for community assistance further down in the statement. “If you want to help us by deleting your Nintendo related uploads and never uploading them again, that would help us a lot.”
Thanks to reporting from Kotaku we do know that some Nintendo properties may already have been removed from the Garry’s Mod Steam Workshop a couple of months ago. It is not known at this time whether or not that was the start of this process or related to a separate takedown request.
You can head over to Steam to check out the full statement, or if you prefer to head towards something different in the field our guide to the best building games on PC will get you in the right direction. You can also take a look at our guide to the best old games you can still play, for a touch of that retro charm.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.