Nintendo wants to take YouTube profits back from its players

[omahanime]

Nintendo wants to take YouTube profits back from its players


YouTube has always proved fertile ground for the entrepreneurial and tech savvy. But gamers may soon be getting the short end of the stick.

That's if Nintendo has anything to do with it. The Japanese gaming giant revealed this week that YouTube clips featuring gameplay from Nintendo titles will now display advertising, meaning that any resulting ad revenue will go back to Nintendo rather than the user who originally created the video.

Nintendo said in a statement Friday that the decision was part of an "on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media," explaining that "unlike other entertainment companies," it has "chosen not to block people using our intellectual property."

For anyone who has ever run up against a YouTube video that's been taken down because it violated one copyright or another, that might seem perfectly legitimate. The problem for gamers, however, is that it flies in the face of a core principle of "Let's Play" videos — clips that anyone can post to YouTube to show others how to make it past a particularly tricky part of a level, teach advanced gameplay techniques or, in the case of "Skyrim's" famous bucket head trick, highlight hilarious glitches or loopholes.

Many of these videos are decidedly amateurish. But the "Let's Play" community, like all aspects of video game fandom, has grown to titanic proportions thanks to the advent of, well, services like YouTube. Popular video game-focused YouTube channels can attract hordes of dedicated subscribers, pulling in millions of views per day. While the exact terms of any specific agreement with YouTube are rarely (if ever) disclosed, the practice has evolved to the point where gamers can become their own manner of Internet celebrity.

Now, these "Let's Play-ers" ("LPers") are afraid that Nintendo has basically found a way to take all of the ad revenue that they believe is rightfully theirs.

Zack Scott, a LP-er with well over 200,000 subscribers who pulls in hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of views for every one of the clips on his YouTube channel ZackScottGames, discovered that Nintendo was "claiming ownership of gameplay videos" with YouTube's "content ID match" system.

Basically, the "content ID match" allows Nintendo to flag user-generated content as its own if the footage contains enough material from one of the company's games. Once a video has been identified as essentially being under Nintendo's domain rather than the users, the company then collects any ad revenue the video produces.

Scott quickly took to social media and online forums to call attention to the problem.

"As of now, they have only gone after my most recent 'Super Mario 3D Land' videos, but a few other popular YouTubers have experienced this as well," Scott wrote in a post on Reddit Thursday.

Scott took issue with Nintendo and YouTube's assumption that "Let's Play" videos no longer count as original material, instead falling within the domain of the game's copyright owner.

"I think filing claims against LPers is backwards," Scott wrote in a post on his Facebook page. "Video games aren't like movies or TV. Each play-through is a unique audiovisual experience."

Ultimately, Scott argued that Nintendo's new policy will actually work against the company's stated goal of expanding its audience on social media — by discouraging LP-ers such as himself from submitting their own videos, Nintendo stands to lose an entire community of passionate gamers and their followers.

"Until their claims are straightened out, I won't be playing their games," Scott said. "I won't because it jeopardizes my channel's copyright standing and the livelihood of all LP-ers."


Nintendo, for its part, said Friday that only clips showing a certain amount of gameplay footage would be affected by the change in its policy, though it didn't specify what, exactly, those standards were or who would be the one to assess them.

Scott said that "several other LPers" have already noticed their ad revenue from videos showing Nintendo games disappear.

Yannick LeJacq is a contributing writer for NBC News who has also covered games for Kill Screen, The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. You can follow him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq and reach him by email [email protected].

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/nintendo-wants-take-youtube-profits-back-its-players-1C9979716

 

[SheNinja]

Well, this is dumb. Nintendo Strikes Back!

 

[Rusty Sticks]

Very, very, very scummy. I never expected Nintendo to pull a move as bad as this; in fact I don't think anyone would have seen this coming.

 

[Guts]

This will bite Nintendo in the ass in the long run. The Nintendo LP community is HUGE, and the games get a lot of publicity through the various LP channels. Gamers won't be motivated to play Nintendo games for a YouTube audience, and less people will be sold on the gameplay and other features they rely on these channels to provide. Will it cause the economic downfall of Nintendo? Probably not. But in my eyes, it makes the company look really greedy.

 

[Nightingirle]

As a youtuber(on hold currently) myself and my bf being a youtuber thats actually partnered and thus earning money from his videos, I find this really bothersome... It's not like they just record the game and that's it, a big youtuber(actually everyone who wants to make decent vids) has to invest a lot of time in his content and I find it only fair to receive some kind of payout for advertising the developers games for free at the same time.
I do not think that one should do the youtube thing just for money, and there are some black sheep and money-whores out there, but there are much more people that entertained people for free for a very long time and then finally get to earn some money for their invested time(which is, for the average youtuber, not much compared to the time it takes).
I really don't like where this is heading and I hope other developers won't follow that same path.

 

[Teal]

Eh? Fair enough. But weird. Very weird. Do they really need that money, and do they really want angry fans?

 

[Luckyfire]

If the world was fair, there would be greed everywhere. ;-;
Confused? Welcome to my world.

The way I see it, greed is just growing on everything: art, literacy, martial arts, money, collection, eBay, Youtube, Google, and nameless websites I don't care to mention. Nowdays nothing is original anymore. Heck, Nintendo is going to make money off its players without even giving credit.

I'd love to shoot the one who came up with that idea if it wasn't illegal or bad.

 

[pokemeister899]

My opinion on this in spoiler(its kinda long)

Spoiler

Although Nintendo is allowed to do this, I don't think it's the smart thing to do. Lets plays can help advertise games, which would mean more money for Nintendo (I for sure can back this up, there is a lot of games I would have not bought if it wasnt for LPs). Not to mention that Nintendo is pretty much biting some lets players in the back for doing this. One example of them doing this would be when Nintendo invited YouTubers for the 48 hour Wii U challenge, which basically was YouTubers making videos for Nintendo to pretty much to advertise the Wii U. One of the YouTubers who participated in this happened to be a Lets player Josh Jepson, who also got affected. Another instance of this happening is when a collaboration channel known as The Runaway Guys made a video of them playing New Super Mario Bros 2. Nintendo of America's twitter tweeted their video twice I believe, and because of them tweeting it that said video now has almost 2 million views on YouTube.(heck, NoA's twitter even went as far as to calling them their friends s23.postimg.org/mp0v2jkkb/nintweet2.png ) I'm not too sure about the collab channel itself(but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some),but all 3 of the individual channels from said collab channel have been affected by this.

Now, for a rant. I've seen some people on sites basically say that Lets Players should just get a real job and to quit whining. You have no idea how mad this makes me. Lets playing a game is so much more than just going up to a mic and playing a game and talking about it. Hours of work could go into a LP episode, which most of it is editing the video itself, not recording it. At that point in my opinion the job that LP's falls under is video editing, and not simple video editing either.

Or, you can watch TotalBiscuit talk about it for 30 minutes(which I agree 100% with all the points he makes in his video)

[video=youtube]www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yX4io2O4EI[/video]

 

[don()shinobi]

I'd love to shoot the one who came up with that idea if it wasn't illegal or bad.

Woah, now! Settle down. Even joking about wanting to shoot somebody can get you in trouble...



I know the sales of the 3DS and Wii U aren't going as projected, but is this really the answer?

 

[Juliacoolo]

I would take down all videos if I were the LPers. This is dumb, and should not be tolerated.

 

[pokemeister899]

I would take down all videos if I were the LPers. This is dumb, and should not be tolerated.

I would agree, but that would just make it worse for the LPers. We need to let Nintendo know that this is not OK. Since they won't listen to petitions, maybe spamming MiiVerse will do the trick?(particularly in the YouTube community)

 

[AdamLambert]

This is completely uncalled for. Unfortunately, I'm too addicted to Pokémon to boycott playing it. However, this is going to bite Nintendo in the butt. I can't see this lasting for too long. Just like when a TV provider cuts a popular channel because a deal can't be made, it comes back eventually.

 

[Cinesra]

LPers deserve the money they get from ads. What makes an LP an LP is the commentary that provides entertainment, review, and tips. That's all coming from the person doing the LP, aka the only reason people watch them in the first place. Without that, it's just gameplay, which I'm okay with Nintendo getting the ad money from, because nothing is really added. Taking the ad money from LPers is like taking the money earned by critics or actors.

 

[PokePhD]

I would take down all videos if I were the LPers. This is dumb, and should not be tolerated.

I would agree, but that would just make it worse for the LPers. We need to let Nintendo know that this is not OK. Since they won't listen to petitions, maybe spamming MiiVerse will do the trick?(particularly in the YouTube community)

I can't imagine any company would take spam seriously.

 

[Haunted Water]

Believe it or not, spamming, being how childish and annoying it is, is quite effective.
If there were to be enough dissatisfaction voiced with this, Nintendo will be forced to stop this if they were to keep their money flow well.
Also, Nintendo pls. Copyright is a thing. Not a tool.

 

[dmaster]

If Nintendo can listen to fans who wanted Earthbound, they probably would take notice if people outraged on Miiverse. Obviously don't spam, but if people give enough good reasons, they might actually be forced to reverse this.

I'm just so surprised Nintendo would actually do something like this. It's downright ridiculous when you think about. The PS4 has a Share button that uploads straight online (basically outright encouraging let's plays/walkthroughs/etc) and Nintendo is straight up shooting this community in the foot. Very surprising and I wouldn't be surprised if this causes a real outrage in the community.

dmaster out.

 

[Cinesra]

It's like Nintendo is discouraging free advertisement.

 

[Zenith]

Zack Scott's an egotistical crapnut and this is well within Nintendo's rights. A somewhat more adult and level-headed view on the thing can be found in the latest episode of Retsutalk (the discussion on that starts about 13 minutes in) with a roundtable of slowbeef (the inventor of Let's Play as a concept), Proton Jon (the one who brought LP to Youtube), and Diabetus (who needs no introduction), with a brief appearance by NintendoCapriSun who happened to be with Jon at the time.

legal standpoint:

So, some background stuff on copyright and LPs from someone who studied copyright policy for awhile(not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, don't cite me in court, don't rely on this any more than you would any other comment on SA).

Since all the way back in like the Atari era, it's been held that the holder of a videogame copyright has copyright on all the possible permutations of that data. That means screenshots and videos of gameplay are within the copyright.

Fair Use is an affirmative defense, meaning the user acknowledges they are infringing the copyright, but it fits into a few specific categories, so it's OK. Fair Use is not a clear standard, and it is not necessarily easy to get to. I can, however, almost guarantee that anyone monetizing an LP would not get a fair use defense. In all likelihood, there are virtually no judges that would rule any normal LP was protected by fair use-maybe an informative one that got into the internet archive, covering something really obscure where the company went out of business.

In terms of companies staying silent and the whole "grey area" stuff, that's because sometimes, an explicit or overly clear implicit permission to let someone use your copyright is seen as a form of abandonment. If a company is held to have abandoned its copyright, that means they can't enforce the abandoned parts of the copyright in the future-in really extreme cases, it means they lose the entire thing(imagine Sega losing Sonic because an exec told a fan they could sell their homebrew game without a license). This is intentional- the courts don't like companies manipulating public perception with a sort of noblesse oblige regarding their work. So companies try to turn a blind eye, but when infringement is called out to them, they have to either clamp down or go through the complicated process of stating what exactly they will permit-and if they do the latter, there's always a risk some judge will rule they gave away more than they intended.

The safest games to LP, in my opinion, are games where the copyright is not clearly held by anyone- so-called "abandonware". Note that you've still gotta be careful, because nothing is stopping anyone from still threatening or bringing a lawsuit under their copyright, even if they've not enforced in a long time.

and here's a good post from Simply Simon:

In any case, there's absolutely no reason to cry bloody murder about this. If it's your only source of income and you are for some contrived reason unable to go away from Nintendo games, tough shit. Did you seriously expect to keep up your business model forever? I predict that in a few years companies will either have recognized LPs as great sources of attention, advertisement and therefore money and either support their and only their own LPers while stamping out others or, best case, do what Nintendo has started and accept free entertainment as free money, or LPs as a concept will have died out because the times, they are a-changing and everything will have been oversaturated with cheap YT shit so nobody cares anymore...

In any way, I'm taking the few quids I get from Google, tell people smugly that I'm actually earning money with my dumb hobby instead of spending thousands of dollars on dunno guns or whatever people do and accept everything as it comes. Because LPs are a hobby, yes, not a pseudo-hobby, but never a job or a way of life or whatever.