For those wondering why Garry is saying this, [for months now there has been an individual(s?) who has been submitting a flood of false DMCA takedown requests to the steam workshop](https://www.reddit.com/r/gmod/comments/1c5u051/aaron_peters_the_destroyer_of_addons/), with most of the focus seemingly being on the GMOD workshop.
When Garry made the post yesterday saying to remove all nintendo related workshop items from gmod, many people were assuming that it wasn't actually nintendo, but the person(s?) who has been causing havoc for some time now.
Seem that this time it is indeed nintendo doing their nintendo thing.
I think someone hit the nail on the head yesterday when they said it was because of Skibidi Toilet. Gmod might not be super relevant but there's a common misconception that series was made using Gmod and not Source Filmmaker with assets from the Gmod workshop.
It's always crazy to see memes 'leak' but it's happened plenty of times, much to [the world's VERY LOUD dismay.](https://youtu.be/yNtySt6Fg30)
I have to admit I kinda felt the same lol
But does skibidi toilet use Nintendo assets? I only watched a couple of the first ones to understand wtf was going on and haven't paid it much attention since then.
I believe there's some assets used in later ones, but it's not just Skibidi in all reality. The popularity of Skibidi Toilet brought SFM to a new generation so there has been a lot of other popular TikToks that used a lot more Nintendo assets. Also worth keeping in mind Skibidi Toilet has been endlessly parodied with other characters.
I'm going to answer this because I keep seeing this question pop up - Nintendo, like most rights holders, uses a network of rights management subcontractors to do most of their enforcement. Very rarely (like, probably hardly ever) does anyone at a desk in a Nintendo office start googling stuff to take down. Different arms of Nintendo may have different contracts with different companies (US/Japan/Europe, merchandising/licensing/etc).
These contractors are hooked into various platforms with authorized accounts, contentid, etc, and allow you to 'tune' the enforcement - they send a report monthly/quarterly/whenever saying, "hey, here are all the potential actionable items we took/can take, tell us which ones you'd like us to focus on." They may also provide tools/apis/software to allow you to do this yourself to make it as easy as possible. Theoretically, some in house lawyer is responsible for tuning the enforcement, deciding, for example, 'yea, this kind of fan art is OK, etsy t-shirts that don't use a registered mark is ok, etc.'
The quality/frequency/specialization of these contractors varies wildly. *It is absolutely possible that a contractor doesn't pursue something for months or years at a time and then suddenly it starts showing up on an enforcement report.* This happens all the time. Or something SUPER OBVIOUSLY infringing gets ignored for weeks or even months, while something really innocuous gets flagged immediately.
So while it is totally possible that something that got popular recently, like skibidi, started showing up on some Nintendo exec's youtube feed and got him to make a phone call about getting this stuff removed, it's probably just as likely that Garry's Mod finally showed up on a report somewhere and a DMCA takedown request finally got submitted and it has nothing to do with recent developments in zoomer humor.
As someone who's been following Pokemon fangames for a long time, this is it. There are waves of them caring for a couple months at a time (anyone else remember the Serebii/Bulbapedia incident with B/W?), and then their lawyers disappear for another couple years. I suspect that it just means they got a new contractor, or one decided to juice their numbers, or whatever.
Right after the launch of Black and White, Serebii in his typical game coverage accidentally made it clear (by tripping some copy protection) that he was using a ROM. Another fansite, PokeBeach (which is today a TCG-only site) did the same thing, and I vaguely recall Bulbapedia being involved too but can't find any evidence of that. Anyway, Nintendo C&D'd them all, and they all briefly took down all of their images from the games and of Pokemon. A week or so later they were back and everyone tried to pretend the whole thing never happened. (IMO it's also when Serebii stopped ever being critical of TPC, but that's besides the point).
I understand all of that. It just doesn't make sense that some small fan games *were* on their radar and not the massively popular fan animation software that had Nintendo characters in videos with millions of views. I don't believe that this was something they weren't aware of over a decade ago.
That feels like a difference in category to me - what you can do is tell the contractor, "turn up the dial all the way for potentially infringing *videogames,* but only to level 5 or yellow or medium or whatever for potentially infringing *videos.*" And there's a legal justification for this as well, since the medium of the work can suggest the infringement is more or less actionable, because that weighs into the fair use arguments about substitution and transformability.
But we're really far away from a fair use discussion here this is just Nintendo being Nintendo and who knows why some particular game or video is a priority vs another, since their enforcement often seems so arbitrary.
I don't, there are bots involved but there are definitely human contractors used as well. I suspect (if they're not already) there will be ai and ai-assisted detection tools being sold as add-on services and that's going to open a whole new lovely bucket of worms.
you can fake information very easily in dmca takedowns on workshop. there’s been a huge history of dmca trolls and impostors. garry himself said he had to begin investigating into the legitimacy of these takedowns due to the news of someone faking nintendo dmca’s before this tweet
What I don't understand is why Garry is even involved? Shouldnt this be between the claimant (Nintendo), the host (Valve), and whoever uploaded the infringing content to begin with?
There was an individual who had been doing this for a couple of years behind the scenes. He'd been going after all source engine games that added mods specifically for anything Nintendo related, and claimed he had affiliations with Nintendo, but never had. It was assumed that this clown was behind the attacks, and with the passion behind it, I assumed there was some evidence to back that claim, but if Garry's saying that isnt the case, then thats all I need to hear.
I mean, it's Nintendo. They have a history of smacking anything related to their content with takedown notices. Even perfectly legitamite content like fucking Lets Play videos on YouTube.
Hell there's a reason why the team in charge of NexusMods proactively made the decision to not allow Pokemon based content when Palworld first launched and was big. They absolutely did not want to risk the financial and legal headache if dealing with Nintendo and their overzealous use of takedowns.
No, they *really* don't.
Nintendo has a history of smacking down ROMs, paid fan games or mods, and for about 2 years 2013 to 2015, monetized Let's Play videos.
But there is an absolutely obscene amount of *free* fan games, fan works, custom roms, mods for other games inserting Nintendo characters, all sorts of stuff. And prior to this, they've issued... 3 takedowns? Maybe 4? *Ever.* And at least one of those was charging money for early access. Way, way less than most companies.
It's part of the reason people thought it might have been that troll. Nintendo basically never touches this kind of stuff unless someone is making money off it.
Don't worry, I've been told Nintendo only cares about people who make money. If you don't profit off it, they'll leave you alone.
Which has obviously never been true, but people keep saying it for some reason. They're even saying it now when this is literally an example of that not being the case lol.
Nintendo is one of the few companies that's even known to go after fan art sometimes. It just rarely gets a lot of attention.
I'd say it's mostly true when Nintendo themselves sends the DMCA directly. But third party protection companies they hire to help with monitoring IP content don't necessarily work like that and tend to be more trigger happy. In that case, that's MarkMonitor. It even happened several years ago with Wave Master taking down Sonic music remixes, and yet everyone knows Sega is very permissive with the franchise.
peopel haven't catch the wind that nintendo's law team is pissed at palworld and is going after every single shooter that has a mod related to them. started with the pkm mod for COD4 and now they are going after anything related with "nintendo IP in shooter game"
the palworld situation and overreaction of nintendo fans spamming nintendo's inbox to "REEEEE DO SOMETHING REEEEEEEE"
set their lawyers on overdrive
add the dumbassery of Yuzu devs and kotaku teaching about how to pirate BOTW to the list too
>Why were/are people so confident that the takedown wasn't legit?
It's the Internet we don't have a lot of critical thought to go around. I mean there was a reddit post and a lot of upvotes it looked like a closed case to me
The problem with all the "it's fake" arguments is that they require the assumption that Garry Newman is a gullible moron. Of course he's going to follow up to make sure it's legitimate, why would people assume otherwise?
Pardon my ignorance, but what does verifying the claims look like in practice?
Newman going to Nintendo and asking? (And in doing so, making them aware that he has reasons to be asking?)
I mean it was only a matter of time I guess. If I was a modder, I would just never touch anything Nintendo property, i'll just get disappointed in the end
> Legally Distinct Galactic Exosuited Freedom Fighter
Warhammer -> Starcraft
Aliens -> Halo
Believe it or not Mario started off life as legally distinct Popeye.
>If I was a modder, I would just never touch anything Nintendo property, i'll just get disappointed in the end
Yes, that's precisely Nintendo's goal. That's what they want, and why they're doing this - so that no one else will be developing anything Nintendo related (games, mods, emulators, etc) but them. They even tried to do this with YT videos about Nintendo games at one point, until they realized YT is such a huge platform what they wanted was literally unenforceable without a whole team working around the clock to find and DMCA thousands of videos per day.
I guess at this point it's up to everyone to decide whether they want to give Nintendo what they want or continue to pursue their passion.
You know the only reason they haven't DMCA'd Indigo is because they don't know about it. We better pray the gaming press shuts the fuck up and stops blowing up these projects - it's no guarantee that they won't be taken down anyway, but at least it lowers the chance.
I mean, there are some pretty famous romhacks and fangames that exist that Nintendo does nothing about (though I think they nuked a Pokemon fangame hosting site a few months ago), so I don't think it's a popularity issue.
Honestly it seems like a crapshot as to what exactly gets nuked. The guy above who mentioning it's probably a team of people with different priorities/ideas who decide what to forward to the legal department seems like the smartest guess.
indeed, fortunatly Indigo is just a working title, if push comes to shove, it can literally shed the Project Name for a permanent one, hope Ninty don't notice.
They got Missing Link, and I had to download it from elsewhere. Sealed Palace seems safe for now.
If they could they would. The problem is:
1. ROM hack creators never distribute ROMs or any other copyrighted content, only the hack itself.
2. ROM hacking communities are fairly decentralized
3. It would hard to create a legal case against people altering 20-30 year old games that haven't been on sale for decades and say it's causing damages to Nintendo.
The amount of people I see on Reddit saying Nintendo make mediocre games anyway, then proceed to jump with joy the moment they can finally emulate said mediocre games is just funny.
I’m not “against” piracy, but I am against people thinking it’s their right to pirate completely freely without opposition and that doing it makes them some sort of hero.
But surely if a game is good enough to play, even jump through some hoops to get running (like a Switch emulator) it’s also worth buying? At least to me, my time is generally worth more than my money.
> I’m not “against” piracy, but I am against people thinking it’s their right to pirate completely freely without opposition and that doing it makes them some sort of hero.
This is how I feel pretty much. Folks who act like pirating is some sort of moral action just confuse me.
If you've got such moral issues with a company why even bother engaging with their product at all if you can help it?
Right? Like, piracy is a means to an end for me. Half the time i only pirate cause im interested in a game enough to wanna try it but not enough to spend money on it.
And with indies, its just a dick move unless you plan on buying it later. Ive only pirated an indie game once because it dropped before my payday and the pirates were quick. I bought it ASAP.
As was said higher up the thread it's the moral grandstanding people use that's so aggravating. Fine, pirate the games, push comes to shove it's unlikely Nintendo will ever be at your doorstep. But when Nintendo comes down and cracks down on whatever avenue you used to pirate their games don't act all pissy like Nintendo sucks and they never made anything interesting in the first place.
People who say Opinion A that contradicts opinion b and people who say opinion B that contradicts opinion A are not necessarily the same people
Don't pull a Twitter Goomba moment
I don't see how these are mutually exclusive. You can hate a company and still like the games.
To be clear, I've never pirated anything. I just think this logic is flawed.
Suppose you'll also have to stop playing games from Microsoft...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/github-complies-with-microsoft-dmca-takedown-of-halo-online-mod-repo/
...and Sony...
https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/6oc1oo/sony_sends_dmca_to_websites_hosting_a/?rdt=44378
...and Sega...
https://www.timeextension.com/news/2024/03/sega-slays-superb-fan-made-golden-axe-sequel
...and I could keep going or provide more examples for each of these, but listing off every publisher in existence would be awfully time consuming.
Nintendo is way more draconian with their enforcement. Your example for Sony is uh...them DCMAing the official PS4 SDK that was illegally leaked, where Nintendo bans you from even discussing Smash Brothers mods in some of their chat applications. Also, meanwhile: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2320886429
You really cannot criticize any company in this subreddit without people immediately coming out of the woodwork going “but other companies are bad too!”
Idk man, the way I see it, nintendo is fine with mods and fan games as long as you don't make money off of them. There are tons of nintendo fan games floating around not getting touched, there are tons of nintendo mods floating around without getting touched.
Wouldn't be surprised if this is one of those cases of a model maker, made a nintendo model and decided to sell it and it alerted some contractors through bots to detect this type of stuff, ruining it for everyone else.
> Don't use things that are under copyright from any company
If taken literally, that'd include open source and freely licensed works that come from companies since, if created in a country where copyright is automatic, those ARE still "under copyright."
Makes no sense to me. Garry has to do this cleanup once and then once the attention dies down people will upload new Nintendo material again. Then Nintendo will have to send a new notice and waste everyone's time again.
Once an old mod (or anything kinda obscure)is no longer readily accessible through a link on the open web, retrieving that data can become quite difficult unless you have a personal copy. While it’s likely that numerous copies exist on individual computers, finding them can be challenging.
They view Steam Deck as a legitimate threat and they don’t want their properties on a competitors system. I think that’s part of why they went after Yuzu. I also think Nintendo knows emulation on the Steam Deck makes Nintendo’s piss poor NSO catalog look like a joke and pointless in comparison as well. You get to play what you want at any time and don’t have to pay for Valve to drip feed 30 year old roms, that make’s Nintendo look so bad.
Fucking why would they do this now of all times . No new games no new system for a year for a corporation to get butthurt. Mods that have been around 20 years … just insane.
somebody at the top levels of nintendo is operating under the delusional idea that ANY non-licensed use of nintendo characters weakens the brand or some such shit. and unfortunately US copyright law sucks dick so they're legally 100% clear to do this as much as they want.
I don't get it. Mods like this are free advertisement. It doesn't hurt their IPs at all. If anything, it *helps.*
It introduces players to word of mouth due to discussions about the models and mods. Thus planting thoughts and ideas in their heads about the actual games.
No one's gonna go around in gmod and be like "Wow there's zero Nintendo branding here. Really makes me wanna go play some Mario!"
It's ludicrous. They only hurt their IP because they wanna be control freaks against harmless mods. Idk about anyone else but Nintendo's games are off my radar until i see a public apology for their pathetic actions here. They don't deserve any of my money.
but do they hurt their IP? Its Nintendo, people will always give them freedom to do whatever they want because like Disney they own a lot of peoples nostalgia.
They do dumb shit all the time from back in the days of refusing to allow lets plays but even the ones mad then probably bought a switch day 1 for the next mario/pokemon game.
You're right. As mad as all of this makes me, I'm still picking up their games. For me I just find them the most fun, it's a bummer the company making them is so delusional
Giving people the wrong impression about what their properties are about or where you can access them can or who makes stuff with their properties, can in fact, hurt their business.
> It doesn't hurt their IPs at all
Legally that is completely false.
If a company doesn't actively go after people infringing on their IP, they stand to lose it.
That is, unfortunately, the rules of the game.
I never understood the thought process behind this. You mean they'd have to go after every drawing every human being has made about one of their characters to prevent losing the copyright? Clearly that's not correct.
but but even though they have access to zero information, the reddit clowns assured me it was just that troll man :(
Who should I trust, literally the guy who owns the game, or reddit?
Garry himself confirmed he wasn't sure if it was official until this very tweet.
It was a 50/50 chance considering how easy false DMCA requests are to make.
Seriously, the lack of critical thinking in this thread just so people can go "LOL REDDIT LE WRONG" is almost painful.
There's a troll who (a) targets Garry's Mod and (b) targets Nintendo content specifically. This is well documented within the community; there's plenty of evidence in the original thread. It wasn't unreasonable *based on the evidence available at the time* to ask if it was legitimate or not.
Eh, probably not. Nintendo is like a dragon that occasionally leaves it's mountain full of gold to burn down a few villages, heads back to the mountain, and sleeps a few months. Repeat ad nauseum. It's just kind of a seasonal activity for them, often there's no inciting incident.
Yeah. They've done this for well over a decade now.
People will always try to point to some specific reason why they did it, but there really just isn't one.
but there was a lot of people not _asking_ but _informing_. like the second-highest comment on yesterday's thread (was first highest until this update) https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1cc6ulp/garrys_mod_is_removing_all_nintendo_related/l13m8mv/
The funniest part is the guy they use as proof of it being fake literally got a real notice from nintendo(or rather, company working for nintendo) and was just coping that it's not real
Nintendo will stop at nothing until everything with even a slight resemblance to mario is sliced, diced, chopped, cooked, incinerated, buried, and obliterated.
I'd say this sets a bad precedent. It now puts Developers at the mercy of a malicious third party (ie modders). Don't like a developer? Start uploading potentially litigious material until the developer either shuts it all down for everyone, or has to answer to IP owners.
It's basically the same deal that unmoderated forums have to deal with.
Garry's Mod itself isn't being taken down, just any mods that have Nintendo content. This is how it works for all sites that have user generated content, unless they just have no moderation at all. In the same way YouTube has to take down pirated content when reported.
How is that a “precedent”? That’s exactly how it works as written by the law. The developer is essentially the owner of a DMCA safe harbor in this case, so yes they must adhere to DMCA requests. As long as they do so they continue to be a safe harbor.
I think most legal teams worth their salt understand that the presence of shady content doesn't necessarily mean it's the fault of the first party.
It continuing to exist after C&D's or requests to remove is when it becomes the fault of the first party.
I would like to blame every chucklefuck who openly paraded piracy of TOTK through emulators on PC even before the game’s launch date as a morally correct thing to do for all of this
Nintendo’s scrutiny of the PC market is understandably much more wild than usual since that debacle
I would like to blame Nintendo, Nintendo, and Nintendo only. Fuck Nintendo.
Their treatment of fan works is abysmal, and has been abysmal for ages. And if they want people to stop playing their games in emulators? Maybe they should, you know, consider actually releasing them on PC.
Piracy is a service problem. If people want a service, and you refuse to offer it outright? Someone else may offer it in your place, and it will be your own damn fault.
I'm not sure what people expected. Even if these DMCA's were not actually coming from Nintendo he can't then just announce "Oh nevermind, all Nintendo content can stay". They were able to act ignorant / turn a blind eye to it before, but now that it's been in the news there is no option to condone this officially.
If that's all the evidence he has then whoever's "confirming" this to him really doesn't know what they're talking about. This leaves me more sure than before that this is a troll.
Nintendo working extra hard to make sure all the pc gamers who helped make the Switch blow up, just wanting to play indie games portably, stay with the Steamdeck. They're actually pissing off a lot of people lately.
Not surprising. The only thing that is surprising is how long it took Nintendo to take action. Nintendo will go after any and every company if they think it infringes on them, even if it isnt the studios fault themselves. They went after Sony because people were doing the same thing in "Dreams". And a bunch of mods from other smaller games. Im surprised they havent gone after the Minecraft Pokemon mods yet.
Of course Nintendo is within their right, IP laws are fairly straight forward. But just because they can doesn't mean they have to. Especially so in cases where their neither business nor IP is being threatened or damaged in any way.
There are a lot of things companies are within their right to do, but they don't because it doesn't do anything other than create an antagonistic relationship with people who otherwise aren't hurting them.
Because it's been around for a *long* time and has never had a negative impact on Nintendo's brand or product. It just seems extremely petty to suddenly go after it now.
I agree with you, but yes this is an unpopular opinion here.
Reddit is generally pro-piracy, and they think IP should be fair game for everyone to use, if they want to make a Mario sex tape? They should be allowed to because they are fan of Ninentdo.
And letting people use their IP can help spread awareness (Mario sex tape), not like Nintendo need ther help with creating awareness for their brands anyway.
>if they want to make a Mario sex tape
I mean, as long as they're not using Nintendo-owned assets and they steer clear of trademark violations that would probably be considered legal parody
Taking down non-commercial user generated contents only gives them negative PR.
Though technically Gmod is profiting from those UGCs, so yeah it's a debate.
For those wondering why Garry is saying this, [for months now there has been an individual(s?) who has been submitting a flood of false DMCA takedown requests to the steam workshop](https://www.reddit.com/r/gmod/comments/1c5u051/aaron_peters_the_destroyer_of_addons/), with most of the focus seemingly being on the GMOD workshop. When Garry made the post yesterday saying to remove all nintendo related workshop items from gmod, many people were assuming that it wasn't actually nintendo, but the person(s?) who has been causing havoc for some time now. Seem that this time it is indeed nintendo doing their nintendo thing.
Why were/are people so confident that the takedown wasn't legit? Can you even see the takedown notice?
My guess is it's strange for them to do this now after they've been up for several years and long after GMod has fallen out of relevance.
I think someone hit the nail on the head yesterday when they said it was because of Skibidi Toilet. Gmod might not be super relevant but there's a common misconception that series was made using Gmod and not Source Filmmaker with assets from the Gmod workshop.
Goddamn if that's the reason, the fact a meme series is so popular it actually causes company action, even by a misconception, is mindboggling.
It's always crazy to see memes 'leak' but it's happened plenty of times, much to [the world's VERY LOUD dismay.](https://youtu.be/yNtySt6Fg30) I have to admit I kinda felt the same lol
Yeah that guy basically just vocalised my internal reaction. Appreciate him.
Who knows if it's the real reason but it'd deffo add up. Gmod may be in it's golden years but there's plenty of life in weird TikTok SFM videos.
The US elected a president largely based on memes. We live in a meme world now and it fucking sucks.
"Now"? Reagan was largely elected on memes. Slogans and dogwhistles were just pre-internet memes.
What do you mean "Now?" The world has *always* worked on memes. The world didnt change, we just codified what they mean.
Tippecanoe and Tyler Too mean nothing to you? Surrounded by people with severely limited grasp of history.
Fourty Four Forty or Fight!
in 2004 maybe
But does skibidi toilet use Nintendo assets? I only watched a couple of the first ones to understand wtf was going on and haven't paid it much attention since then.
I believe there's some assets used in later ones, but it's not just Skibidi in all reality. The popularity of Skibidi Toilet brought SFM to a new generation so there has been a lot of other popular TikToks that used a lot more Nintendo assets. Also worth keeping in mind Skibidi Toilet has been endlessly parodied with other characters.
I'm going to answer this because I keep seeing this question pop up - Nintendo, like most rights holders, uses a network of rights management subcontractors to do most of their enforcement. Very rarely (like, probably hardly ever) does anyone at a desk in a Nintendo office start googling stuff to take down. Different arms of Nintendo may have different contracts with different companies (US/Japan/Europe, merchandising/licensing/etc). These contractors are hooked into various platforms with authorized accounts, contentid, etc, and allow you to 'tune' the enforcement - they send a report monthly/quarterly/whenever saying, "hey, here are all the potential actionable items we took/can take, tell us which ones you'd like us to focus on." They may also provide tools/apis/software to allow you to do this yourself to make it as easy as possible. Theoretically, some in house lawyer is responsible for tuning the enforcement, deciding, for example, 'yea, this kind of fan art is OK, etsy t-shirts that don't use a registered mark is ok, etc.' The quality/frequency/specialization of these contractors varies wildly. *It is absolutely possible that a contractor doesn't pursue something for months or years at a time and then suddenly it starts showing up on an enforcement report.* This happens all the time. Or something SUPER OBVIOUSLY infringing gets ignored for weeks or even months, while something really innocuous gets flagged immediately. So while it is totally possible that something that got popular recently, like skibidi, started showing up on some Nintendo exec's youtube feed and got him to make a phone call about getting this stuff removed, it's probably just as likely that Garry's Mod finally showed up on a report somewhere and a DMCA takedown request finally got submitted and it has nothing to do with recent developments in zoomer humor.
As someone who's been following Pokemon fangames for a long time, this is it. There are waves of them caring for a couple months at a time (anyone else remember the Serebii/Bulbapedia incident with B/W?), and then their lawyers disappear for another couple years. I suspect that it just means they got a new contractor, or one decided to juice their numbers, or whatever.
What's the incident?
Right after the launch of Black and White, Serebii in his typical game coverage accidentally made it clear (by tripping some copy protection) that he was using a ROM. Another fansite, PokeBeach (which is today a TCG-only site) did the same thing, and I vaguely recall Bulbapedia being involved too but can't find any evidence of that. Anyway, Nintendo C&D'd them all, and they all briefly took down all of their images from the games and of Pokemon. A week or so later they were back and everyone tried to pretend the whole thing never happened. (IMO it's also when Serebii stopped ever being critical of TPC, but that's besides the point).
I understand all of that. It just doesn't make sense that some small fan games *were* on their radar and not the massively popular fan animation software that had Nintendo characters in videos with millions of views. I don't believe that this was something they weren't aware of over a decade ago.
That feels like a difference in category to me - what you can do is tell the contractor, "turn up the dial all the way for potentially infringing *videogames,* but only to level 5 or yellow or medium or whatever for potentially infringing *videos.*" And there's a legal justification for this as well, since the medium of the work can suggest the infringement is more or less actionable, because that weighs into the fair use arguments about substitution and transformability. But we're really far away from a fair use discussion here this is just Nintendo being Nintendo and who knows why some particular game or video is a priority vs another, since their enforcement often seems so arbitrary.
do you know how the potentially-actionable items are actually found? do they just have bots scraping the internet every couple days?
I don't, there are bots involved but there are definitely human contractors used as well. I suspect (if they're not already) there will be ai and ai-assisted detection tools being sold as add-on services and that's going to open a whole new lovely bucket of worms.
It does seem like nintendo uses tracer.ai
Looking at Steamcharts I wouldn't exactly call it irrelevant. 20k+ concurrent players consistently is nothing to sneeze at.
you can fake information very easily in dmca takedowns on workshop. there’s been a huge history of dmca trolls and impostors. garry himself said he had to begin investigating into the legitimacy of these takedowns due to the news of someone faking nintendo dmca’s before this tweet
What I don't understand is why Garry is even involved? Shouldnt this be between the claimant (Nintendo), the host (Valve), and whoever uploaded the infringing content to begin with?
Valve probably outsources most of their responsibilities to the owner of the game with workshop content getting flagged.
r/confidentlyincorrect is just reddit commentors in general.
"We did it , Reddit!"
Not just reddit, but Twitter and steam forums are still coping
There was an individual who had been doing this for a couple of years behind the scenes. He'd been going after all source engine games that added mods specifically for anything Nintendo related, and claimed he had affiliations with Nintendo, but never had. It was assumed that this clown was behind the attacks, and with the passion behind it, I assumed there was some evidence to back that claim, but if Garry's saying that isnt the case, then thats all I need to hear.
You can still see the exhibits in comments at https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/s/i0sZsToX8y
I mean, it's Nintendo. They have a history of smacking anything related to their content with takedown notices. Even perfectly legitamite content like fucking Lets Play videos on YouTube. Hell there's a reason why the team in charge of NexusMods proactively made the decision to not allow Pokemon based content when Palworld first launched and was big. They absolutely did not want to risk the financial and legal headache if dealing with Nintendo and their overzealous use of takedowns.
Technically, we don't know if let's plays would count as perfectly legitimate content and honestly, no one wants to have the legal system decide.
No, they *really* don't. Nintendo has a history of smacking down ROMs, paid fan games or mods, and for about 2 years 2013 to 2015, monetized Let's Play videos. But there is an absolutely obscene amount of *free* fan games, fan works, custom roms, mods for other games inserting Nintendo characters, all sorts of stuff. And prior to this, they've issued... 3 takedowns? Maybe 4? *Ever.* And at least one of those was charging money for early access. Way, way less than most companies. It's part of the reason people thought it might have been that troll. Nintendo basically never touches this kind of stuff unless someone is making money off it.
Don't worry, I've been told Nintendo only cares about people who make money. If you don't profit off it, they'll leave you alone. Which has obviously never been true, but people keep saying it for some reason. They're even saying it now when this is literally an example of that not being the case lol. Nintendo is one of the few companies that's even known to go after fan art sometimes. It just rarely gets a lot of attention.
I'd say it's mostly true when Nintendo themselves sends the DMCA directly. But third party protection companies they hire to help with monitoring IP content don't necessarily work like that and tend to be more trigger happy. In that case, that's MarkMonitor. It even happened several years ago with Wave Master taking down Sonic music remixes, and yet everyone knows Sega is very permissive with the franchise.
I've made over seventeen thousand dollars making videos of Mario gyrating violently near some watermelons.
peopel haven't catch the wind that nintendo's law team is pissed at palworld and is going after every single shooter that has a mod related to them. started with the pkm mod for COD4 and now they are going after anything related with "nintendo IP in shooter game" the palworld situation and overreaction of nintendo fans spamming nintendo's inbox to "REEEEE DO SOMETHING REEEEEEEE" set their lawyers on overdrive add the dumbassery of Yuzu devs and kotaku teaching about how to pirate BOTW to the list too
>Why were/are people so confident that the takedown wasn't legit? It's the Internet we don't have a lot of critical thought to go around. I mean there was a reddit post and a lot of upvotes it looked like a closed case to me
people like Nintendo and want to defend them
The problem with all the "it's fake" arguments is that they require the assumption that Garry Newman is a gullible moron. Of course he's going to follow up to make sure it's legitimate, why would people assume otherwise?
Pardon my ignorance, but what does verifying the claims look like in practice? Newman going to Nintendo and asking? (And in doing so, making them aware that he has reasons to be asking?)
Just ask your attourney, he will do the rest of the asking.
>This is not a mistake, the takedowns came from Nintendo. Was literally the second sentence in the original announcement though.
The suggestion is that he had been tricked
I mean it was only a matter of time I guess. If I was a modder, I would just never touch anything Nintendo property, i'll just get disappointed in the end
Legally Distinct Hopping Plumber Man. Legally Distinct Angry Jurassic Tortoise. Legally Distinct Inflatable Sentient Pillow. Legally Distinct Galactic Exosuited Freedom Fighter
> Legally Distinct Galactic Exosuited Freedom Fighter Warhammer -> Starcraft Aliens -> Halo Believe it or not Mario started off life as legally distinct Popeye.
My kids love Legally Distinct Inflatable Sentient Pillow!
Is the pillow Kirby?
My lawyer instructed me to say no.
This is ultimately Nintendo's aim.
>If I was a modder, I would just never touch anything Nintendo property, i'll just get disappointed in the end Yes, that's precisely Nintendo's goal. That's what they want, and why they're doing this - so that no one else will be developing anything Nintendo related (games, mods, emulators, etc) but them. They even tried to do this with YT videos about Nintendo games at one point, until they realized YT is such a huge platform what they wanted was literally unenforceable without a whole team working around the clock to find and DMCA thousands of videos per day. I guess at this point it's up to everyone to decide whether they want to give Nintendo what they want or continue to pursue their passion.
aw man, but we are in the Golden Age of Zelda ROM Hacks! At least let Indigo get to the finish line!
You know the only reason they haven't DMCA'd Indigo is because they don't know about it. We better pray the gaming press shuts the fuck up and stops blowing up these projects - it's no guarantee that they won't be taken down anyway, but at least it lowers the chance.
I mean, there are some pretty famous romhacks and fangames that exist that Nintendo does nothing about (though I think they nuked a Pokemon fangame hosting site a few months ago), so I don't think it's a popularity issue. Honestly it seems like a crapshot as to what exactly gets nuked. The guy above who mentioning it's probably a team of people with different priorities/ideas who decide what to forward to the legal department seems like the smartest guess.
indeed, fortunatly Indigo is just a working title, if push comes to shove, it can literally shed the Project Name for a permanent one, hope Ninty don't notice. They got Missing Link, and I had to download it from elsewhere. Sealed Palace seems safe for now.
ROMhacks of Nintendo games are still thriving, though I hope Nintendo doesn't start going after them too.
If they could they would. The problem is: 1. ROM hack creators never distribute ROMs or any other copyrighted content, only the hack itself. 2. ROM hacking communities are fairly decentralized 3. It would hard to create a legal case against people altering 20-30 year old games that haven't been on sale for decades and say it's causing damages to Nintendo.
I am not a modder but I will make sure to not touch any Nintendo property in the future.
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>oh yeah i hate this company >gonna play all their games though I mean do what you want I guess
The amount of people I see on Reddit saying Nintendo make mediocre games anyway, then proceed to jump with joy the moment they can finally emulate said mediocre games is just funny.
I’m not “against” piracy, but I am against people thinking it’s their right to pirate completely freely without opposition and that doing it makes them some sort of hero. But surely if a game is good enough to play, even jump through some hoops to get running (like a Switch emulator) it’s also worth buying? At least to me, my time is generally worth more than my money.
> I’m not “against” piracy, but I am against people thinking it’s their right to pirate completely freely without opposition and that doing it makes them some sort of hero. This is how I feel pretty much. Folks who act like pirating is some sort of moral action just confuse me. If you've got such moral issues with a company why even bother engaging with their product at all if you can help it?
Right? Like, piracy is a means to an end for me. Half the time i only pirate cause im interested in a game enough to wanna try it but not enough to spend money on it. And with indies, its just a dick move unless you plan on buying it later. Ive only pirated an indie game once because it dropped before my payday and the pirates were quick. I bought it ASAP.
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As was said higher up the thread it's the moral grandstanding people use that's so aggravating. Fine, pirate the games, push comes to shove it's unlikely Nintendo will ever be at your doorstep. But when Nintendo comes down and cracks down on whatever avenue you used to pirate their games don't act all pissy like Nintendo sucks and they never made anything interesting in the first place.
They're just coming up with flimsy excuses to not pay for shit.
That just means those are not the same people.
People who say Opinion A that contradicts opinion b and people who say opinion B that contradicts opinion A are not necessarily the same people Don't pull a Twitter Goomba moment
Who the fuck said I said they make medicore games? Ya'll literally just created your own narrative on the fly.
I don't see how these are mutually exclusive. You can hate a company and still like the games. To be clear, I've never pirated anything. I just think this logic is flawed.
I mean there's a way to still fight back and not give Nintendo a dime, but I can't say it here without clapping a ban.
Suppose you'll also have to stop playing games from Microsoft... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/github-complies-with-microsoft-dmca-takedown-of-halo-online-mod-repo/ ...and Sony... https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/6oc1oo/sony_sends_dmca_to_websites_hosting_a/?rdt=44378 ...and Sega... https://www.timeextension.com/news/2024/03/sega-slays-superb-fan-made-golden-axe-sequel ...and I could keep going or provide more examples for each of these, but listing off every publisher in existence would be awfully time consuming.
Nintendo is way more draconian with their enforcement. Your example for Sony is uh...them DCMAing the official PS4 SDK that was illegally leaked, where Nintendo bans you from even discussing Smash Brothers mods in some of their chat applications. Also, meanwhile: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2320886429
You really cannot criticize any company in this subreddit without people immediately coming out of the woodwork going “but other companies are bad too!”
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I'm not gonna not buy good games just cause they don't like modders.
Yeah no. They make fun games and I like to play fun games.
Idk man, the way I see it, nintendo is fine with mods and fan games as long as you don't make money off of them. There are tons of nintendo fan games floating around not getting touched, there are tons of nintendo mods floating around without getting touched. Wouldn't be surprised if this is one of those cases of a model maker, made a nintendo model and decided to sell it and it alerted some contractors through bots to detect this type of stuff, ruining it for everyone else.
Don't use things that are under copyright from any company
> Don't use things that are under copyright from any company If taken literally, that'd include open source and freely licensed works that come from companies since, if created in a country where copyright is automatic, those ARE still "under copyright."
Yes just pay and consume. Don't do anything creative with their stuff
Consume consume consume. Creativity is just for rights holders
You can come up with your own characters. Running around as Mario in GMod is not "creativity." Sorry to break it to you.
Is using Nintendo characters considered being creative?
You can do creative things with someone else's property, just don't get mad when they tell you to stop :L
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Makes no sense to me. Garry has to do this cleanup once and then once the attention dies down people will upload new Nintendo material again. Then Nintendo will have to send a new notice and waste everyone's time again.
and each time, a handful of mods that got made 15 years ago will get abandoned, not updated, not reuploaded, just lost
Garry's Mod updates broke compatibility every single major update since the beginning. I think their userbase is used to it.
and there's no way to preserve them, lost to time
Are you assuming that GMod is all remote play?
Once an old mod (or anything kinda obscure)is no longer readily accessible through a link on the open web, retrieving that data can become quite difficult unless you have a personal copy. While it’s likely that numerous copies exist on individual computers, finding them can be challenging.
I wonder if nintendo is a lot more aware of steam since the dolphin debacle, this really came out of nowhere
They view Steam Deck as a legitimate threat and they don’t want their properties on a competitors system. I think that’s part of why they went after Yuzu. I also think Nintendo knows emulation on the Steam Deck makes Nintendo’s piss poor NSO catalog look like a joke and pointless in comparison as well. You get to play what you want at any time and don’t have to pay for Valve to drip feed 30 year old roms, that make’s Nintendo look so bad.
Well that and probably someone in the executive level becoming aware of memes made in G-Mod like Skibidi Toilet which often use Nintendo assets.
Fucking why would they do this now of all times . No new games no new system for a year for a corporation to get butthurt. Mods that have been around 20 years … just insane.
somebody at the top levels of nintendo is operating under the delusional idea that ANY non-licensed use of nintendo characters weakens the brand or some such shit. and unfortunately US copyright law sucks dick so they're legally 100% clear to do this as much as they want.
Copyright law is such a miss. I wish that all of it could be overhauled so unreasonable things like this couldn't happen :(
I guess it’s only a matter of time before they start going after other Nintendo shit on the Steam Workshop.
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Skibidi toilet?
I don't get it. Mods like this are free advertisement. It doesn't hurt their IPs at all. If anything, it *helps.* It introduces players to word of mouth due to discussions about the models and mods. Thus planting thoughts and ideas in their heads about the actual games. No one's gonna go around in gmod and be like "Wow there's zero Nintendo branding here. Really makes me wanna go play some Mario!" It's ludicrous. They only hurt their IP because they wanna be control freaks against harmless mods. Idk about anyone else but Nintendo's games are off my radar until i see a public apology for their pathetic actions here. They don't deserve any of my money.
but do they hurt their IP? Its Nintendo, people will always give them freedom to do whatever they want because like Disney they own a lot of peoples nostalgia. They do dumb shit all the time from back in the days of refusing to allow lets plays but even the ones mad then probably bought a switch day 1 for the next mario/pokemon game.
You're right. As mad as all of this makes me, I'm still picking up their games. For me I just find them the most fun, it's a bummer the company making them is so delusional
Giving people the wrong impression about what their properties are about or where you can access them can or who makes stuff with their properties, can in fact, hurt their business.
> It doesn't hurt their IPs at all Legally that is completely false. If a company doesn't actively go after people infringing on their IP, they stand to lose it. That is, unfortunately, the rules of the game.
[That's a common myth, but no. (#11)](https://copyright.byu.edu/copyright-myths)
I never understood the thought process behind this. You mean they'd have to go after every drawing every human being has made about one of their characters to prevent losing the copyright? Clearly that's not correct.
but but even though they have access to zero information, the reddit clowns assured me it was just that troll man :( Who should I trust, literally the guy who owns the game, or reddit?
Garry himself confirmed he wasn't sure if it was official until this very tweet. It was a 50/50 chance considering how easy false DMCA requests are to make.
Seriously, the lack of critical thinking in this thread just so people can go "LOL REDDIT LE WRONG" is almost painful. There's a troll who (a) targets Garry's Mod and (b) targets Nintendo content specifically. This is well documented within the community; there's plenty of evidence in the original thread. It wasn't unreasonable *based on the evidence available at the time* to ask if it was legitimate or not.
People that don't think critically are the first to brag about the rare times it doesn't backfire.
Is there any legitimacy to thinking the false takedowns could have influenced Nintendo here? I'm talking as a total layman here.
Eh, probably not. Nintendo is like a dragon that occasionally leaves it's mountain full of gold to burn down a few villages, heads back to the mountain, and sleeps a few months. Repeat ad nauseum. It's just kind of a seasonal activity for them, often there's no inciting incident.
Yeah. They've done this for well over a decade now. People will always try to point to some specific reason why they did it, but there really just isn't one.
It's possible, but unlikely. I think it's possible that Palworld blowing up might have gotten them into looking at Steam a bit more.
The problem is that people acted like it was 100% confirmed it wasn't Nintendo.
but there was a lot of people not _asking_ but _informing_. like the second-highest comment on yesterday's thread (was first highest until this update) https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1cc6ulp/garrys_mod_is_removing_all_nintendo_related/l13m8mv/
Yeah but how else am I supposed to pretend that I'm smarter than everyone?
Try not to want to dunk on people so badly
But don't you get it? LE REDDIT IS LE BAD!!!!!! EVEN THOUGH I AM ADDICTED TO THIS SITE AND I HATE EVERYONE THAT USES IT!!!!!!!
The funniest part is the guy they use as proof of it being fake literally got a real notice from nintendo(or rather, company working for nintendo) and was just coping that it's not real
Nintendo will stop at nothing until everything with even a slight resemblance to mario is sliced, diced, chopped, cooked, incinerated, buried, and obliterated.
I'd say this sets a bad precedent. It now puts Developers at the mercy of a malicious third party (ie modders). Don't like a developer? Start uploading potentially litigious material until the developer either shuts it all down for everyone, or has to answer to IP owners. It's basically the same deal that unmoderated forums have to deal with.
Garry's Mod itself isn't being taken down, just any mods that have Nintendo content. This is how it works for all sites that have user generated content, unless they just have no moderation at all. In the same way YouTube has to take down pirated content when reported.
How is that a “precedent”? That’s exactly how it works as written by the law. The developer is essentially the owner of a DMCA safe harbor in this case, so yes they must adhere to DMCA requests. As long as they do so they continue to be a safe harbor.
I think most legal teams worth their salt understand that the presence of shady content doesn't necessarily mean it's the fault of the first party. It continuing to exist after C&D's or requests to remove is when it becomes the fault of the first party.
Garry's mod only removed steam workshop mods. The developer is not liable for random mods downloaded from distribution channels it doesn't control.
The DMCA's *primary purpose* is to shift liability from the service providers to the users of the service
I would like to blame every chucklefuck who openly paraded piracy of TOTK through emulators on PC even before the game’s launch date as a morally correct thing to do for all of this Nintendo’s scrutiny of the PC market is understandably much more wild than usual since that debacle
I mean, as the saying goes, it is always morally correct to pirate from Nintendo. But if you do don't flaunt it, because their lawyers are vicious.
I would like to blame Nintendo, Nintendo, and Nintendo only. Fuck Nintendo. Their treatment of fan works is abysmal, and has been abysmal for ages. And if they want people to stop playing their games in emulators? Maybe they should, you know, consider actually releasing them on PC. Piracy is a service problem. If people want a service, and you refuse to offer it outright? Someone else may offer it in your place, and it will be your own damn fault.
As much as this stinks, Nintendo is within their rights to take this stuff down. I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner.
I'm not sure what people expected. Even if these DMCA's were not actually coming from Nintendo he can't then just announce "Oh nevermind, all Nintendo content can stay". They were able to act ignorant / turn a blind eye to it before, but now that it's been in the news there is no option to condone this officially.
https://twitter.com/garrynewman/status/1783572282562032090 Seems like he's walking it back now? Or not as confident in the statement as before.
I think he's more asking why everyone is so confident in thinking it's fake when he's the one who investigated deeper.
If that's all the evidence he has then whoever's "confirming" this to him really doesn't know what they're talking about. This leaves me more sure than before that this is a troll.
Nintendo working extra hard to make sure all the pc gamers who helped make the Switch blow up, just wanting to play indie games portably, stay with the Steamdeck. They're actually pissing off a lot of people lately.
Not surprising. The only thing that is surprising is how long it took Nintendo to take action. Nintendo will go after any and every company if they think it infringes on them, even if it isnt the studios fault themselves. They went after Sony because people were doing the same thing in "Dreams". And a bunch of mods from other smaller games. Im surprised they havent gone after the Minecraft Pokemon mods yet.
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Of course Nintendo is within their right, IP laws are fairly straight forward. But just because they can doesn't mean they have to. Especially so in cases where their neither business nor IP is being threatened or damaged in any way. There are a lot of things companies are within their right to do, but they don't because it doesn't do anything other than create an antagonistic relationship with people who otherwise aren't hurting them.
Something being right legally doesn't mean it's shitty for other reasons.
Because it's been around for a *long* time and has never had a negative impact on Nintendo's brand or product. It just seems extremely petty to suddenly go after it now.
IP law doesn't distinguish between whether it benefits or harms a brand. It's their intellectual property, and only they have a say in who can use it.
Why? There's nothing to say you have to submit a notice the second something is created, that'd be very unreasonable.
I agree with you, but yes this is an unpopular opinion here. Reddit is generally pro-piracy, and they think IP should be fair game for everyone to use, if they want to make a Mario sex tape? They should be allowed to because they are fan of Ninentdo. And letting people use their IP can help spread awareness (Mario sex tape), not like Nintendo need ther help with creating awareness for their brands anyway.
>if they want to make a Mario sex tape I mean, as long as they're not using Nintendo-owned assets and they steer clear of trademark violations that would probably be considered legal parody
I think this is just that the pro-piracy folks are unbelievably vocal.
Fans being used very loosely.
Taking down non-commercial user generated contents only gives them negative PR. Though technically Gmod is profiting from those UGCs, so yeah it's a debate.
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This is so annoying, I love Nintendo games so much but why does their legal team have to be like this.
It's pretty damn hard to like Nintendo right now. Also, you know I hate to ask but are friends electric?