Topic: Copyright troll reportedly posing as Nintendo; all GMod Nintendo content set to be taken down

So the Garry's Mod team has just announced that all Nintendo-related addons are being systematically removed from the Steam Workshop page for the game due to DMCA takedown requests. However, a number of figures in the community are alleging that a troll is behind these takedown requests, and not Nintendo themselves.

I saw this this afternoon. I’m not sure if I would be more disappointed if it was actually Nintendo or trolls issuing the takedowns. I understand it is Nintendo’s content and they get the final say, but there is some stuff like the Metroid Prime SWEP that is really well put together that would be a shame to lose.

Apparently that one "darkghost38" message which has been making the rounds was from 3 years ago.

am curious what is actually going on since while Nintendo is infamous for things like takedowns and whatnot it is also not uncommon for misinformation to spread rapidly such as with the whole Dolphin thing on steam IIRC that was initially believed nintendo issues a DMCE against an otherwise legal emulator but then it turned out that said emulator actually did contain copywrite material and it was valve who reported it (again IIRC)

Yeahhhhhh I'm gonna echo what @Mgalens said myself: as much as I'd like this to be a rogue troll rather than Nintendo themselves, a lot of the evidence for it being a troll is relatively old. Again, I'd love to be proven wrong here, but the odds are not looking great :/

Entirely possible, but it does seem like this has been an ongoing issue for a few months, with the troll possibly active for longer. Did try and archive all my Nintendo addons as best as I could, just in case. Just doesn't make any sense, though. It's been so long since GMod released.

My main concern is that if Nintendo truly is the one behind the takedowns, then this could set precedent for them or other companies completely cracking down on mods, either for other games using their IP or for their own games.

Update: The plot has seriously thickened.

This does seem relatively innocuous at first, especially because of the laughable reference to the nonexistent Boise, Arkansas...but the thing is, if you look that address up in Boise, Idaho, you'll find Tracer AI, a company that provides brand protection tools using AI and machine learning. Not directly on Google Maps, though, but you'll see their logo on Street View and the address is displayed on Tracer's website. So what do Tracer's tools do?

According to them, they "use Human-in-the-Loop AI and machine learning to dramatically shorten the time from detection to enforcement by intelligently automating the review process and automatically offer an enforcement recommendation."

Yeah...AI may well responsible for this mess, especially with the email itself mentioning AI. And I'm not sure what possibility disturbs me more: Nintendo themselves contracting this company to handle enforcement of their IP rights, or a copyright troll managing to abuse their tools in this way. The GMod Workshop is apparently not the only corner of the Internet that's been hit with these peculiar Nintendo-related takedowns in the last couple months, too.

Can't take the credit for finding this, though. AdBmaster on Twitter was the one to do the digging. I just decided to verify the details myself, and yeah - they don't look pretty (though I kind of have to admit I'm okay with porn being taken down, personally).

Hey, I'm an independent journalist and I've been researching this particular "mm-nintendo.com" domain for a bit so I wanted to jump in. This tweet (https://twitter.com/brewsterkoopa/status/1763353362899087661) does worry me, as it sources a 3 year old Reddit thread for evidence that the Gmod claims were illegitimate. So far, a lot of the evidence linking this fake domain to the Gmod DMCA requests hinges on that Reddit thread. Unless Facepunch releases the actual DMCA claim, we don't know if it's real or not.

That said, the mm-nintendo.com is registered to Nintendo of America Inc. and seems to be pointed to MarkMonitor, which is really expensive and you have to be part of an actual organization to get access. Nintendo has used them for online brand protection in the past, to my knowledge, but no idea if they still do now or not. It's possible they seized it. (If they haven't, they probably will now that this is getting some attention.)

I want to echo this: I don't want to share a lot of what I've found, but a lot of the evidence I've dug up points to the Gmod claims being legit, and that it's not a copyright troll. I'd assume that Facepunch has lawyers that look at claims like this and confirm legitimacy before taking action, and in their statement, they assert that this was Nintendo. Valve has also been in contact with Nintendo directly before, so they know whether or not a contact is legitimate there. So, this theory doesn't track right now.

If any NL staff would like, I'm more than happy to share evidence as I find it. I'm already sharing with another organization. **If anything here ends up being fake, I'd like to protect consumers and companies from falling victim to these fake claims.**

-Slade

@SladeWatkins Thank you for your input! I would suggest trying to look more into whatever's seemingly going on with Tracer AI if possible. So far, they only seem to be explicitly tied to the one email that mentions The Pokemon Company from what I've seen, but there are probably more floating around out there - apparently, more than just GMod has seen odd takedown notices issued for Nintendo-related things in the past few months - and the potential involvement of a company specializing in AI-powered automatic brand protection enforcement might explain a lot of what's going on right now. I think the red flags in the email (especially referring to Boise, Alaska when the address is tied to Boise, Idaho) and the fact that it just seems unlikely that Nintendo, a company so behind on the curve elsewhere, would suddenly be embracing use of AI (though if it's just The Pokemon Company, then that would add up a bit more), do still make me apprehensive that this is 100% Nintendo.

I'm a bit apprehensive on things as well. Nintendo going to an Ai company that's relatively unknown is pretty odd. Especially given how Nintendo as a whole takes ages to actually adapt to modern tech. Gmod is pretty old- and on top of that it seems like the AI-powered brand protection is going after anything and everything Nintendo-related, instead of after what actually tends to cause problems legally-speaking. While it could be them, I feel like it warrants digging a bit deeper to actually see if this truly means anything or not.

The phone number in question on the Pokemon Company thing is definitely a scam number, claiming to be Microsoft Legal department. Something awfully screwy is going on.