With all the buzz about the Xbox One over the past week it’s possible that this bit of news slipped under your radar. Nintendo, having recently become a YouTube Partner as of February, has flexed their legal muscles and claimed control over its copyrighted content on the popular video sharing network and that includes “Let’s Plays”, a type of gameplay commentary/walkthrough that a lot of YouTube channels use.
What this means is that Nintendo is using YouTube’s copyright algorithms to analyze videos and if there’s a certain percentage of Nintendo content in those then Nintendo monetizes them and receives that ad money. This cuts the video makers out of the ad revenue loop and any Let’s Plays will forward the money to Nintendo instead of the person(s) who made the video.
This has led to a bit of backlash from the YouTube Let’s Play community, with a lot of well-known personalities claiming that they won’t be playing Nintendo games on their channel anymore. A lot of smaller game developers have come out saying that Let’s Play videos are great forms of grass-roots advertisement, and a few companies have gone out of their way to give YouTube channels special permission to make money by playing their games and making videos of that.
What do you guys think? Is Nintendo right to claim the ad money from these videos? Are people correct in the backlash? Go!
Source – PA Report
I think they are being a bit too… what’s the word? Cunty? From a business standpoint, I see no advantage to it. This is essentially them ridding all of the free advertising their games were getting. Sure they made a monetary gain now, but who’s going to play the games after this? I doubt very many. So where will they get their Let’s Play money from now?
Hahaha, yeah that’s about the right word. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. If you claim the ad revenue from videos featuring your games, then who’s going to make them?
This epitomizes the fact that Nintendo doesn’t understand the gaming industry’s current state, and the internet as a whole. These days YouTube let’s plays are how the word of mouth about many games spreads, and they become free advertising for those games. No sane YouTuber is going to do any more Nintendo ones now, and therefore all of that potential free advertising will go away. Pure idiocy.
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Nintendo is NOT going after just Let’s Plays. I wish this rumour would stop. They’re going after everything from reviews to unboxings.
@John Grey,
The article above states, “…and that includes “Let’s Plays”, a type of gameplay commentary/walkthrough that a lot of YouTube channels use.”
“Includes”.
Nowhere does it state that it is only “Let’s Play” that is targeted. It’s simply the fact that the “Let’s Play” community is the most vocal opponent of this new action.