Do you think nintendo would have done this if the wii u was selling better.
This seems to be a desperate money-grab on Nintendo’s part.
Personally - and this is just my opinion - I ‘suspect’/perceive that the Wii-U is an abject failure, not unlike the Virtual Boy. Nintendo started looking for a quick way to mitigate the financial damage, and noticed ‘Let’s Players’. The problem is, that it’s their intellectual property and well within their rights to monetize (as, it is theirs.) The counter-problem is, those Let’s Players are providing advertising for Nintendo’s games, with the ad revenue helping to support their life style of being unofficial marketing for Nintendo.
It’s not suprising that Nintendo is facing some backlash over this. While they’re flexing their legal rights, which there is nothing wrong with at all, they’re alienating a community that really has done nothing but help them, even if it’s technically a bend of the law to do so.
Again, my unstudied, non-expert opinion, is that Nintendo is only doing this for a quick, small profit. If they would focus on making better games instead of creating unnecessary consoles, I don’t think they would be in quite the situation of having to monetize the Let’s Players’ videos…though, again, it’s totally within their rights. But, they’re still harming themselves by taking this action. Full disclosure: after watching certain Let’s Plays, I have actually gone out and bought the game, which I proceeded to enjoy (includes Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy XIII-2, Lost Odyssey, and The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. From Dario8676’s Let’s Plays, I am eagerly anticipating the XBox360 release of Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD.)
In all fairness, I’m glad that Nintendo did not react as powerfully as they could have, and pull Let’s Plays down with DMCA notices. Again, they still could, but they would come off as being more desperate than they actually appear to be (which, isn’t to minimize that desperation. From figures I’ve read, the Wii-U has been a substantial failure.)
Lets Play videos would need to make an extreme boatload of cash for someone like Nintendo to be interested in getting a piece of the pie.
It’s important to note that they’re not blocking LPers, they just want to put ads for the game at the front of the video. I don’t think putting ads on LP’s is really a “desperate money grab”. Putting ads pretty much anywhere you can is standard business practice for pretty much every retail corporation. I also think the LPers are being a little too whiny about having a Nintendo ad in front of their video. If they really claim that they’re helping Nintendo with their videos by advertising, then it’s hypocritical to throw a fit about Nintendo actually advertising before their video.
Edit: Never mind, I see his actual complaint is that he wants to be able to put his own non-Nintendo ads first and get click-through payments and this means he can’t. Meh, I guess that makes sense, but I still don’t think Nintendo’s doing anything particularly outrageous here, and there are plenty of LPers and youtubers who just put up videos for free or have some other way to get click-cash from people.
I think someone like pewdiepie he makes 6 figures every month so they want a piece of that. Although I dont think its fair if they want to take all the ad money
Six figures a month?! Damn, I’m in the wrong line of work.
Clearly. And hey, if someone was making that kind of cash using my IP I’d want a slice of the pie too!
Youtube is very lucrative if you get well known. Ray William Johnson gets 7 figures a month.
So…nintendo wants less free advertising? Uhh…what??
Not sure what is really wrong or surprising about this. People are making money off publishing nintendo content, and they found a way to get their cut without shutting them down or pulling them. If they were going to be jerks about it, they could have just pulled the plug. Easily could have been handled much worse.
I don’t think they really expect to see money from this I think it is probably more a way to deter people from doing it so they can either have their own support stuff or just have it more concentrated. I don’t see how they will make a dime from this move when there are so many videos.
I don’t think that it is in anyway about making money, last year they were profitable (though not much) and in reality probably >1m dollars is simply not worth it.
Very true, they probably spent more analyzing and going through the process than they will expect see in return.
Nope this is just about as ‘worse’ as it can get and shows Nintendo, like many companies is so woefully out of touch with social media and the new digital frontier that they are willing to ‘Cutting off the nose to spite the face’.
First off it has to be acknowledged that for the time being it is Nintendo’s legal right to do this, at least until there is a test case to determine exactly where Let’s Plays sit with copyright. This in itself is a huge, ugly discussion and for the point of this post will be put to one side.
Whilst a very small few Let’s Play creators are making ‘6 or 7 figure sums’, they are only doing so due to the added value they are provide through their commentary/play style. Most Let’s Play creators wont being making anything like that number as you’ll need many millions of subscribers and tens of millions+ of views a month. A modest living can be generated by youTube uploaders if they have in excess of 500,000 -1 million subscribers and 100k-200k+ views on every video they make. So really its not about the money, the ad income while nice is likely to be nothing in the scheme of things to Nintendo.
The problem is that most of the Let’s Play creators rely on whatever income is generated from ads in order to fund the creation of these videos, especially for those in any professional looking quality. Getting the right equipment is not cheap and its very time consuming to put the more professional looking Let’s Plays together. I believe this is true to the point that without the ad revenue there is no point in making the Let’s Plays unless the creator can be reimbursed for the effort. Thus if they lose such an revenue stream it is no longer worth making LP, the upshot of which is suddenly Nintendo face losing massive amounts of user content and the increased profile it gives to their games on youTube. LP’s will simply turn to games by other publishers or just stop.
This will not stop all LP, those uploaders who don’t put in the time, or make wobbly recordings with their hand held mobile will exist, but now you’ve got inferior quality (on all fronts) content of your games on youTube and nothing that looks professional to counter-balance it.
Then you have to consider what will happen to the eco-system of those LP’s who maybe aren’t producing content in a professional manor or frequency and therefore decided not to monetise their streams. In this case youTube viewers will be used to non-advertisement content, which will now suddenly get annoying ads. Sure you skip out of them after a few seconds, but its yet another annoyance put in front of the viewer ( just like all those non-skippable warnings at the start of dvd’s) which could impact overall viewer-ship of the content, again resulting in a reduced online profile for Ninetendo games on youTube.
On top of all this it must be considered that the youTube content ID Match is a scatter-gun approach, it cannot differentiate between Let’s Play, walk-throughs, reviews, first-Impressions, etc. So it will not only be LP’s that suffer the ads, it will be a wide range of content, some of which is protected from Nintendo’s copyright under fair use. I think this may have already happened with Nintendo content, but its definitely known to have happened in relation to SEGA’s mis-guided marketing attempt to get every single trace of ‘Shining Force’ removed from youTube.
Again like the other points above, once this starts to happen those producing this content will either lose revenue for content that is clearly under fair-use or have ads added to content they want to be free to the viewer. The upshot again being they will be less inclined to cover or feature Nintendo games.
There are arguments that LP’s can damage sales. While there is some truth to this I suspect the ‘upsell’ of viewers who go on to purchase the game is higher than the loses. After all DVD sales do fine, even after people have been to the cinema to watch a film, they’ll still by it when released to dvd/blu-ray/digital, occasionally multiple times, across different formats.
Honestly i’ll be surprised Nintendo doesn’t reverse this decision in the next week or so, once someone at the company with any level of competency looks into this and see that its just a lose-lose situation for them.
They will simply find an alternate way of revenue if they want to continue. Just like everything else in digital media. Be it record labels or whatever. They had a nifty little way of making money by essentially just playing games, but like everything in social media, things change and often quickly. If there is value in it, they can find a way to sustain it. Donations, subscriptions, ads, whatever. They still can use the Nintendo content.
Let’s be honest here, they were making money almost entirely off the work of others. They didn’t make or host the site, create any tech, aggregate adds or create games. They bought a console, signed up for youtube account and had the free time to play and record games. Sure they may have interesting commentary and been able to generate a following through social media, but then they can also leverage that into a paycheck through other means. Others outside the YT channel make a good living on it through donations. They had a nice ride while it lasted and should be stoked about that, because I imagine that other game companies will follow suit.
And there is no “fair-use” or copyright issue really at play here. Nintendo/YT isn’t banning or pulling videos. Moreover, you can’t really claim “lost revenue” and fair use at the same time, it is contradictory since your access and use of the content hasn’t changed. Fair use is copyright exception for non commercial use (review/teaching/parody/etc). Though there are rare exceptions to this, it is unlikely it would fall into this category. Regardless, the LPers are still able to use the content for their purpose and not only be able to claim fair-use, but their use is in fact supported by Nintendo. The fact that Nintendo now gets the ads space wouldn’t be a justifiable argument for fair use, as making that claim alone indicates that they are in fact using the content for profit only.
It’s actually a pretty reasonable play from Nintendo, as they aren’t attempting to limit or prevent people from using their content, or even make you jump through hoops to do so. They are simply using YTs existing policies to place their own ads on their content.
LPers can still make a living at if they choose to, they will just have to put a litte more effort into it than just playing games. Others have, and do well at it.
Typical dismissal of the effort that the professional LP’s put into their work and many would argue it was the added value from their commentary and personality that made it more than ‘just playing games’
How can they use ads if Nintendo have got the jump on them? Donations, never going to work, subscriptions might, but then the viewer gets ‘double dipped’, they pay for the content and still get Nintendo ads in front of everything.
Even the alternative avenue that has been proposed that they distribute the audio/video content separately. let Nintendo get the ads on the video, and they get ads on the audio isn’t really going to work. Its even more effort, difficult to set up, difficult for the viewer.
So the path of least resistance becomes simple - drop Nintendo LP’s, which in turn reduces the profile of Nintendo and its games on youtube, plus other social media, less networking etc, its a massive ripple effect. This is why its a dumb move on Nintendo part.
Another dismissive comment, just like the ‘they should get a proper job’ type comments that get bunded about. Putting together LP’s especially for something professional in appearance still takes considerable effort on their part.
Such a comment is not restricted to LP’s, the same could be said for reviewers or any number of other careers.
That has been YouTubes choice to gain market share and attractor creators and viewers to their platform. One which has worked very well by all accounts.
Again very dismissive of the actual effort that goes into this. Sure what you say can be true of some LP, but the better ones, the ones that Nintendo really should want to keep around take time and become full time jobs.
Yep I agree, they will find other means, the least resistance being not to cover Nintendo games at all!
Yes it is, a reviewer should not find there video review of game plastered with ads unless they explicitly descide to add them.
No I don’t think so, not within the field of video reviews or commentary about (not commentary over a LP) a game. This has already happened and will happen - its due to the scatter-gun aproach of youTube’s content ID match, they don’t care what the ‘use’ of the video is, just that it contained some content ‘claimed’ by Nintendo.
Just to be clear I’m not talking about LP’s in regard to fair use, where LP’s and similar content stand with regard to copyright is more complex and not something that is even worth discussing, especially as it has no bearing on the impact of Nintendo’s decision. I’m pointing out that there is fair use content out there that will be picked up by ‘content ID match’ that shouldn’t.
From a legal standpoint yeah and I don’t think anyone disagrees with that, but from a don’t screw over your biggest supporters its a dick move, the only thing worse would have been to remove content, just like SEGA did (see previous reply). This was so bad it actually closed down some youTube channels and others were hit with infractions even though they only discussed the game and had no video of it!
(From U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index)
The important thing to note here is the third box. That’s why a review is considered fair use an a let’s play isn’t. A review is criticism, and one can argue (much less soundly, but still argue) that an LP is criticism, but the difference is scale. Showing off clips of the game (or often no footage at all) is not the same thing as showing the entire game. With a let’s play, it often completely supplements the actual game. You’ve seen the whole game and all it’s surprises, so why would you really want to pick up the game at all? Of course, it’s absolutely impossible to show that let’s play effects game sales in either direction, but it makes sense that Nintendo is making this distinction.
Also, what’s with all this talk about “let’s plays are, like, super hard to make”? Where exactly is that impression coming from? For pretty much all let’s plays, the only new piece of technology you need to get is a hauppauge or an elgato, which are not so prohibitively expensive that you NEED ads to put the food on the table or some nonsense like that. The only other things you can really argue someone needs for let’s play are a computer with internet and some basic editing software, a webcam if you’re jumping on that stupid scarecam trend, and a console with a game, which are things that people are already going to have. So once again, failing to see the extreme financial burden you have to go through to start an LP.
And if you are seriously going to make the argument that LP requires a lot of effort to put together: spoiler alert, it doesn’t. Most lps are just people having diarrhea of the mouth and just saying any stupid thing that pops into their head while recording themselves playing a game they would be playing regardless. Seriously, if you were ever a bit chatty when your friends are watching you play a game or something like that, that’s how much effort an LP takes (plus the non-effort of syncing the video with the audio and usually no other post processing besides that). Okay, let’s even go with best case scenario and say that someone prepared a lot of material ahead of time, recorded the game and did post commentary with multiple people and edited extensively. You are still going to be hard pressed to make me consider that “a lot of work” as a game developer, but even then, the reward for that effort is a slicker production that you will probably get more fans for. And if that extra effort doesn’t get you recognition, then maybe you should evaluate why you are putting that much effort in the first place (unless your goal was, god forbid, to actually make a good video regardless of the amount of people watching).
I really don’t understand at what point everything had to do with money. I can understand youtube’s monetization system for sure: some people produce television quality unique (or parody) content that they definitely deserve money for, but you give people an inch and they take a mile. Now you deserve money for your barely thought out commentary over something you didn’t make. And if the creators of that game that have spent years developing it and decades developing their brand identity see someone taking their game and making it all about themselves, god forbid if they take a reasonable approach rather then flat out taking down your video, which they have every right to do. Seriously, what ever happened to let’s playing a game because you like it and you want other people to see your unique perspective? That’s how let’s play started, and now it’s just become a cash cow for mostly talent-less people to milk. I’m not losing any sleep now that the bubble has burst. (Which is another thing: if you quit your day job for let’s play money then you were getting into something incredibly risky that has no job security at all, and when your luck turns bad you really can’t complain).
I feel a little bad for the people who do LP as a hobby and put ads up to get a bit of change on the side, but the cash grabbers kind of ruined it for everyone else.
I will agree that Nintendo could have probably handled things a bit better, I like what Microsoft did the best, where they said you can let’s play our games as long as you don’t monetize them. It’s basically the same thing that Nintendo did, but they issued a statement before they started content ID matching people. Also, if it is a cash grab, it’s definitely a sign that Nintendo is getting desperate, but honestly I think they were just sick of seeing their games being illegally bastardized.
Still missing the point though.
Ignore the legalities, ignore the money side. People do LP’s for the exposure and their love of the games. Now those who did it full time and required the revenue to do it, can’t. Those that did it for fun now have adverts book-ending their work. In both cases it makes it far less attractive to invest any time or money into producing this content, especially those that try to make their videos in a professional manor. End result less exposure for Nintendo games on youtube, less exposure means less chance to discover, less chance for stuff to go viral, less networking across social media. Nintendo may make some small change, but lose out hugely on exposure and good will. That is the problem with their stance. There are zero benefits and plenty of negatives.
I have to read more about this from some more official sources, but for what it’s worth:
Youtube Content ID Matches are not manual. It’s very likely that some one at Nintendo, or some firm managing Nintendo IP, registered all Nintendo proprietary music into Youtube’s Content ID system, and automatic warnings are starting to pop up.
Youtube constantly is meddling with their process, but last time I read it was modified so that, should you get one such warning, you can dispute and get control of your content back automatically, the IP owner is informed and they can evaluate the video and decide if they must take legal action. The case here may be that the youtubers in question are afraid of that potential lawsuit (if this is really just a lets play video, they should not be afraid.)
Before this, Youtube used to allow the Content ID registrar to just turn down the complaint and retain profits from your videos. It was supposedly changed due to the large amount of false registrations (some companies have registered the entire Garage Band loop library as their own.)
I am not sure what the current state of youtube is though, as I mentioned: they constantly messing with it.
They don’t really get a say in it if they are end to end relying on other services. Real review/commentary sites will use their own sites and control the ads and everything else. If you want that level of control do it yourself. Social media sites have and always will be at the discretion and control of the sites owners. People who are shocked or surprised at that are not paying attention.
And yes, I am completely dismissive of concept of “professional” LPers, especially those who leverage services like youtube. Anyone who claims it is difficult is lying or technically challenged. They are using the vast resources provided by game companies and youtube to make a buck just playing games. I have no problem with this, but those providing the services that make it possible are entitled to and going to take their cut. If the LPers want to reduce that cut, then they need to provide the services and site themselves (or just some place other than youtube).
Again, fair use isn’t relevant to the issue if the content is not removed or blocked. The fair use provision allows for publication/distribution of content that is under copyright. That is in no way affected. The fact that there are ads on the front by the content owner is completely irrelevant to the issue of fair use. The goal of the video is an extended review, fair use could allow for that, and Nintendo isn’t challenging that. So that goal (and use) with regards to the content is unchanged. Everything else to with ads is strictly in the domain of youtube’s policies. If that doesn’t work for them, don’t shouldn’t use youtube. Its as simple as that.
Especially since by doing what they have, Nintendo as basically said that doing a LP is permissible. Nintendo would have a difficult time attempting to pull these videos from other places since they have already said it was ok. Being inconsistent on pursuing copyright protection by a company often heavily impacts the result of cases. And since they are just leveraging youtube policies and not actually forcing an agreement from the uploader, the fact of whether or not there are ads isn’t relevant to the issue for them either and would actually work against outside of youtube.
So, while they are taking a cut via youtube’s policies, they are essentially, publicly condoning the practice as a whole.
If you ignore the money side there is no issue and no problem. They can continue to do things exactly as they have. If it is for the love of it, there is no need make their videos more professional. The need to increase the professional presentation of a video comes from the desire to make money. And at that point it is a business argument and not a “for the love of the game” argument.
If someone wants to LP a game, it requires minimal effort. If they want to make a business out of it, they will have to take more time and effort. So this only really affects those who are in it for the money.