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Garry Newman, the creator of Garry’s Mod, shared a screenshot in one of his Discord servers on Sunday claiming it was a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice from the creator of Skibidi Toilet.
Skibidi Toilet is a mega-popular YouTube machinima series made by a guy who calls himself DaFuq!?Boom! online and Alexy Gerasimov on government forms. The series uses Valve Half-Life art assets to mash together weird nonsense poetry and imagery that’s caught on big with younger viewers. The iconic image from the series is that of a man’s head with a grotesque rictus grin gyrating in a toilet.
The videos are viewed tens of millions of times on YouTube alone. The brand is so popular that Michael Bay’s production company, Invisible Narratives, just announced it’s developing a TV show and film based on the series.
Garry’s Mod is a sandbox “game” created by Newman where users can play with Valve’s Source engine and thousands of user-generated art assets to make their own games, worlds, and videos. Both Garry’s Mod and Skibidi Toilet were created using the same raw art assets. Both are products of the rich modding scene that’s kept Valve and Half-Life 2 popular for 20 years.
So fans of Skibidi Toilet and Garry’s Mod didn’t take kindly to the news that Bay’s Invisible Narratives had served Garry with a DMCA takedown notice.
“You know what’s worse than the Nintendo DCMA,” Newman said on Discord, referencing a takedown notice from the Japanese game maker that devastated the Garry’s Mod community earlier this year. “Skibidi toilet guy sent a DMCA too.”
He then posted a screenshot of the takedown notice.
“Significant revenue is being generated by unauthorized Skibidi Toilet Garry’s Mod games that are being advertised everywhere,” the screenshot said. “There is absolutely no licensed Steam, Valve, Garry’s Mod content related to Skibidi Toilet.”
The screenshot listed the Steam page for Garry’s Mod, namechecked DaFuq!?Boom! and listed the copyright registration number as “VAu 1-509-921.” The registration number, at least, is real. There’s a listing at the U.S. Copyright Office for various Skibidi Toilet characters that’s owned by Invisible Narratives.
“A DMCA notice is a very powerful tool,” Louis Tompros, a copyright lawyer with the WilmerHale law firm, told Gizmodo. “Platforms react to it very quickly and will take things down right away because …if you are trying to get something taken down the internet, the DMCA is by far the strongest tool for you to do it quickly.”
But it’s a double-edged sword, and there are heavy penalties for anyone who files a fake notice.
“If someone really was filing false DMCA notices to take down Garry’s Mod, the creators of Garry’s Mod are going to have a pretty good claim against whoever that is, assuming they can find them,” Tompros said.
It seems ridiculous that a YouTube series using 20-year-old art assets from a classic first-person shooter could even have a copyright claim. But, according to Tompros, once the toilet was fused with the Half-Life head, then a new and transformative work was born. One with an enforceable copyright.
“The easiest example I always find is a program like Microsoft Word,” he said. “There’s all kinds of copyrights protecting the structure of Microsoft Word, the layout, how everything works. But once I type something into it, the copyright on the words I create and the book that I write using Microsoft Word belongs to me.”
On his Discord server, the creator of Skibidi Toilet blamed the DMCA takedown notice on pornography.
“I’m here to make it clear that I have NEVER tried to cause any harm to Garry and Garry’s Mod,” he said.
He praised Valve and Garry’s Mod for giving users the freedom to create worlds with ease.
“But unfortunately bad people take advantage of this ease, and these people’s content I don’t support and encourage,” he said. “Most of you don’t know this, but back in 2023 Skibidi Toilet NSFW content has been massively present on YouTube. What you see right now is mere fraction of that. I and my team were struggling with removing many heinous NSFW YouTube videos and channels that were using Skibidi characters in a gross manner.”
Newman, Gerasimov, and Invisible Narratives did not return Gizmodo’s request for comment so it’s hard to know what, exactly, is going on here.
Tompros told Gizmodo that he’s seen fake DMCA takedown notices before.
“It’s supposed to be hard,” he said. “The problem is that, with very large platforms, thinking of things like the YouTubes of the world, they get so many DMCA requests that they do have to engage with some automation of the process. Anytime there’s automation of the process, there’s room for playing games there.”
The knee-jerk response to the idea of Skibidi hitting Garry’s Mod with a DMCA takedown was visceral and strong. This makes sense as these are both beloved artworks that survive and thrive only because the original copyright holders, Valve, believed that allowing the internet to play and create with their characters was good for everyone. A DMCA goes against the pioneer spirit enjoyed by both parties.
