Gary Newmanthe creator behind the classic sandbox game Garry’s Mod, has spoken out against the game’s longstanding Nazi theme. On Twitter, Newman wondered if he should ban the RPG servers run by “a bunch of guys that seem to really love the Nazis”. Yes, that sounds like a good idea to me.
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Released November 2006 Garry’s Mod is a physics-based sandbox game published by Valve that lets you manipulate 3D models to create your own fun. It’s similar to Minecraft or Roblox that there is no predetermined goal. The game gives you tools to play and it’s up to your imagination to conjure up a world to share with others, make a movie etc with Nazis of course. Unfortunately some Garry’s Mod Gamers actually seem to harbor genuine Nazi sympathies. YouTuber Super Bunnyhop has a pretty good video out of [checks notes] 10 years ago Look at the variety of Nazis lurking inside Garry’s Mod.
All this means that there were Nazis Garry’s Mod for a minute. It’s unclear what developer Facepunch Studios has since done to address this troubled player community, but Newman now publicly questions whether he should ban them outright. However, it is difficult.
To ban or not to ban Nazis Garry’s Mod
new man tweeted a poll on April 19 asking his followers a simple question: “We should ban [these Nazi gamemodes in Garry’s Mod]Right?” At the time of writing, the poll had just concluded, with a full 73 percent of the nearly 50,000 respondents claiming yes, Nazi game modes should be banned.
Newman continued to follow the poll with a long tweet about server moderation. He explained that he “could see merit in the games here where you roleplay survival [or] War Scenarios”, which expresses a large part Garry’s ModRPG community servers are just that: “engrossing, interesting, engaging and educational” experiences that explore the diplomacy, humanity, power struggles, politics and heartache of a global catastrophe. He doesn’t want to monitor them. However, Newman noted that certain types of moderation issues crop up.
The problem for us is that there are a bunch of guys lurking in some of these games who seem to genuinely love the Nazis. It seems like some of them really love the Nazis outside of the game too. That creates problems. When someone runs a [World War 2] RPG servers and accepting donations, and this bunch of regular hardcore players really love the Nazi stuff… what are they [going to] turn the game more towards? Will they say, “Hey, that’s not really what this game is about [so] please find another community’?
Newman noted that he did not want to ban all World War II-related topics Garry’s Mod server, but getting rid of the “Celebration of the Nazis” seems to be the top priority for the team. He brought up ideas like outright banning swastikas, Heil-Hitlers and other Nazi symbols, and clarified that this could lead these players to simply use a different symbol to circumvent the ban. Still, he believes these people are “so fragile” that the ban would be too much for them and they would just leave the game alone.
Newman concluded by asking how server owners who appear to allow Nazis to proliferate Garry’s Mod can “work together” with the developers of the game to stop the problem before a ban comes. He noted that while this could become a dispute, it is not about freedom of expression.
“This is not a loss of liberty,” Newman tweeted. “This is not an attack on your free will. This isn’t mind control. This is nothing new. We’ve shut down servers before, we’ve blocked [unsavory] activities, and we will continue to do so. This is really a notification to the server owners, we’ve had this gray area for a while and are keeping a closer eye on it now.”
my city has reached out to Newman for comment.
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While it doesn’t seem final yet that Garry Newman and Facepunch Studios will ban servers populated by Nazis, it’s clear the team is paying more attention. It’s one thing to use an RPG server as a vehicle to experience the historical ramifications of a genocidal group. It’s another to use the game to promote genuine Nazi propaganda, something Newman it seems now hopes to stop.
