Skibidi Toilet Copyright Takedown Request to Garry’s Mod Is Very Dumb

On Sunday, Garry Newman, the creator of Garry’s Mod, said on his official Discord that he received a DMCA takedown request for Skibidi Toilet-related content in his game, prompting the creator of Skibidi Toilet, DaFuq!?Boom!, to hop into to the Discord and say that the request did not come from him. A partially redacted screenshot of the request Newman shared on Discord shows that it came from Invisible Narratives, the company that acquired the film and TV rights for Skibidi Toilet, which it is currently developing with director Michael Bay.

If you’re not familiar with most of the proper nouns in the above sentence, first of all, congratulations. Second of all, I promise you I am not having a stroke, but merely trying to explain the complicated consequences of optioning for movie and TV rights a meme that is composed almost entirely of recycled assets from a 20-year-old video game. 

Skibidi Toilet is a machinima series on YouTube by Alexy Gerasimov, who goes by DaFuq!?Boom!, which started in 2023. It’s mostly an absurdist meme featuring a number of characters which are heads popping out of toilets, all of which are made with assets that were originally created for Valve’s Half-Life 2, which launched in 2004. Part of the joke—and in my opinion Skibidi Toilet is largely an elaborate joke—is that despite its absurdity Skibidi Toilet has developed very deep lore for all of its characters over many videos, enough to fill a dedicated wiki. Half-life 2 always had a robust modding scene that is supported by Valve, and every episode of the dozens of Skibidi Toilet episodes posted to YouTube is made with Source Filmmaker, Valve’s tool for creating 3D animations with the Half-Life 2 Source game engine and other 3D models and assets. 

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