Garry’s Mod Vs Nintendo: DMCA saga rolls on but who is the mysterious Aaron Peters?

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.

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.