Tensions have been heating up around the web series Skibidi Toilet. Garry’s Mod creator Garry Newman recently shared in his s&box Discord channel that he’d been hit with a DMCA strike notice regarding copyright infringement of Dafuq?boom!’s Skibidi Toilet.
Garry‘s Mod open sandbox model unfortunately renders the game liable to such situations, as we’d previously seen with Nintendo, but this case is stranger for a few reasons; namely, Skibidi Toilet’s creator Dafuq?Boom! claims he was unaware of the strike.
Though he claims not to know the exact origin of the strike, Boom!’s made a statement on his Discord channel explaining that the DMCA action isn’t related to anything new, but to a situation that arose in 2023.
“The letter Garry has shown on S&Box discord channel is nothing to do with recent events, but from something that occurred back in the end of 2023, and is being taken out of context.”
Boom then explained that this was a situation that saw YouTubers using Skibidi Toilet characters in highly innapropriate GMod animations.
“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. And you know, as evident, YouTube report system just doesn’t work. This all still remains unprosecuted, fully monetized and available for all ages.”
Though Dextero found out that the characters mentioned in the email received by Garry Newman belong to Invisible Narratives, the Skibidi Toilet-adjacent company co-owned by director Michael Bay and Adam Goodman, Boom! also states that this is not where the action originated from.
“The letter that was posted by Garry is not from me or INVIZ. While we don’t know exactly where it came from, it’s possible it was sent after member of the team reached out at the end of 2023 with concerns that Skibidi characters were being animated and monetized in hurtful ways.”
Skibidi Toilet, for those unaware, is a web series generated within Garry’s Mod that’s become extremely popular over the years. It would make sense for Bay’s company to be attempting to claim all the material related to the brand, especially considering how we recently learned that it’s working on a tentative Skibidi Toilet movie or TV adaptation, but that might not be the case.
The other reason why this is all incredibly strange is that some of the Skibidi Toilet characters’ copyrights are secured by Dafuq?Boom! or his partners, which is a bit puzzling considering how they spawned out of Garry’s Mod — and of Valve, before that. Whatever the case might be, Boom! stated his love for Garry’s Mod, and said the goal was never to bring it down. We’ll see if anything more comes of this.
Published: Jul 30, 2024 03:42 pm