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