Fez Creator: YouTubers Are "Stealing" Content From Game Developers

Infernal Lawyer

New member
Jan 28, 2013
611
0
0
Well, my opinions are mixed. If someone watches an LP of a game and then decides not to buy it, it's either because 1. The game is complete arse and not worth the cash, or 2. The game is heavily story based and not much else, and thus not worth paying to experience again.

As has been said though, Fish could have been more diplomatic about how he speaks (as per usual), plus it's a bit odd that he talks now instead of when that entire YouTube kerfuffle happened.
 

Kerric

New member
Jul 28, 2012
21
0
0
DirgeNovak said:
"If you generate money from putting my content on your channel, you owe me money. Simple as that"
Except I already gave you money, Philippe. Because I bought your shitty game.
Please stay gone, prick.
If you buy a book, the author receives royalties. However, you do not then have the right to record your reading of the book to make money from it, even though you paid for the book.

If you pay for a premium cable channel, you can watch certain baseball games. However, you do not have the right to record and replay that content for profit without the permission of the league.

Paying for something does not give you infinite rights. However, this is a separate issue from whether or not it is foolish for a game developer to suppress videos which might popularize their game.
 

Reincarnatedwolfgod

New member
Jan 17, 2011
1,002
0
0
I would call youtube videos as free adveriszing for game if they are actually good.
I have bought a decent amount of games based due be exposed game that was unknown to me before see them in youtube videos.
I also say people are not necessarily watching for videos for the game it self and more based upon the personalty of the person making videos. there is are videos of pewdiepie talking to fucking cleverbot and it get millions of views. They are sure as hell not watch it for cleverbot.
 

II2

New member
Mar 13, 2010
1,492
0
0
Not quite sure his logic is quite on.

A movie or show or music or whatever there's a better argument for the royalty free use of content. Video games are interactive, though - and media showcasing the product without offering access to it's function is, effectively, advertising and promotion... Normally something YOU pay other people for...

I probably didn't need to bother typing that out, but, there you go.
 

Ziadaine_v1legacy

Flamboyant Homosexual
Apr 11, 2009
1,604
0
0
Do all us developers a favor and leave the industry with that attitude Mr Fish.

When I EVENTUALLY finish my work, I expect it's going to get criticism, it's going to be loved or hated, its going to be in lets plays or walkthroughs. Instead of seeing ONLY the bad side to this, see it as a good thing. These "hipster Youtubers" you hate, are going to be promoting your artwork, it's going to be seen a lot more then if it was sitting in the corner of Steam or hidden away on a developer's website that no one knows about.

As long as you're not pulling an "Earth: 2066", I think it's a good thing.
 

jthwilliams

New member
Sep 10, 2009
423
0
0
So I think there is some validity here. Not in the stealing, but in a game with a heavy story like adventure games which are more or less interactive stories then Lets plays do translate a bulk of the entertainment value of the work without compensation to the creators.

I don't think a Let's play of "titan fall" gives anything away, it just makes people more interested in the game. But a full play through of "The wolf among us" does give away the entertainment of the game because watching is mostly like playing it.

To me it would be the same as buying the latest Stephen King book and then making youtube videos of you reading it aloud all the way through. Except in the case of the game, the quality of the presentation is consistent because the game is doing it. At least in the case of reading a book, if you are a poor reader or a great reader it would have a huge impact on the video.
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

Henchgoat Emperor
May 15, 2010
5,499
0
0
Is this guy the definition of bitter or what? I thought he was done with the industry, but I guess he just wanted more attention. I really don't know the guy, but can only infer things from what he says publicly... all I hear is a bitter person raging at anyone he feels may have slighted him.
 

Charli

New member
Nov 23, 2008
3,445
0
0
Phil Fish says another strongly opinionated thing, in his usual petulant way. Stop the presses.

Oh wait it did. Fucking Christ. WHO CARES.
 

The_Scrivener

New member
Nov 4, 2012
400
0
0
Phil Fish is a grown baby who is in a perpetual state of being sent to bed without dessert.

He is loudmouth crap who has provided only small good things for gaming culture that are impossible to detect now beneath the Everest-esque mountain of bullshit he's piled on top of them.
 

unstabLized

New member
Mar 9, 2012
660
0
0
Oh look, it's the guy who's so full of himself that he's basically blind. Fuck off Phil, you stopped being relevant a while ago and no one gives a damn.
 
Jan 22, 2011
450
0
0
superguin200 said:
This makes me sad more than anything else. Phil's just an opinionated guy, and whenever he posts an opinion people give him so much shit for it that I'm surprised he didn't quit the games industry much earlier. Just leave the guy alone, he at least deserves that.
I would if the guy wasn't such a douche with an inflated ego that ran off with this tail between his legs after saying all Japanese games suck. Then he had the nerve to canceled fez 2 leaving his production crew high and dry while taking all the money that was going to be used to made game with him. Then he had the gall to say on april fool's day guess what guys "Fez II is back on" as a joke. Screw him and his over inflated ego. You act like an asshole in this community, you get treated like one in return.

 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
8,407
0
0
Steven Bogos said:
Fez creator Phil Fish says that YouTubers who don't share ad revenue with game developers are "basically pirates."
Phil Fish is wrong. he often is, so where the news?
You know its not news that Phil is spouuting nonesense. he always did that.
"If you generate money from putting my content on your channel, you owe me money.
But im not putting your content on my channel. by playing the game my way - the interactivity i do - i create my own content, that belongs to me, not you. hence, i do not owe you anything.
I am creating a derivative work of art, which is fully legal thing to do. and i have legal right to sell it too.

as an earlier attempt by Nintendo
you mean an ongoing attempt by Nintendo. since, you know, they have been doing it for 5 years and havent stopped.




The Gentleman said:
Some videos have barely any addition other than simply viewing the game as played by the video maker, often with sparse comments just to make the series legal, particularly in linear story games (survival horror is what I tend to view). And this is where I think videos cross the line. The video is not being watched, in that case, to determine whether to buy the product or for the commentary, but rather clearly to have watch the game being played as is, no different than watching a friend play in your living room.
I watch videos of games i already played. I care about the commentary and player actions in the game. granted, actions are more limited in linear game, but far more expansive in, say, strategy games. i am sometimes amazed in how totally different their tactics were from mine. its the player choices and commentary that attracts me to watch any gameplay video, not the something the developer did itself.

Kuredan said:
That said, I think a lot of people are more hung up on how he transmitted his message rather than the message itself. How can you justify monetizing someone else's work? If it's not a parody or doesn't fall under fair use, if it's not attributed and the artist is not remunerated with a percentage of the revenue you make (ya know the kind often found in contracts), how is that anything but theft? Yes you may have put work into your product, but your source material is not your own. It's just like plagiarizing an term paper, only yo're getting paid for it.
Its because its not somone elses work. it is a derivative work that you create yourself and own it because you are creating the interaction. the game does not play itself. you are creating the videos and gameplay because you interact with it. claiming that just because its an object i interact with it means that video belongs to him is akin to clayming that if i film myself cutting down a tree with a chinasaw the video belong to the chainsaw company because i am using their chainsaw to do it.

Tygerml said:
Does a game that's heavily scripted and reliant on cutscenes really differ that much from a video?
can you press "start" and watch the game play itself without input? inf the answer is no, then yes, it is different from a video.

SecondPrize said:
You don't get to just broadcast the entirety of a work and profit from it without permission. Fair Use can be used by reviewers and the like in court but Fish is right here.
noone is broadcasting the source code of his games on youtube (at least not that i know of) and Fish is fully wrong here both morally and legally.

T said:
The comparison with piracy is actually pretty strong; it doesn't seem right that the creator of something gets no recompense for the use of their creation, but at the same time I'm not sure there's anything that developers can do to improve the situation for themselves.
your right. it does not seem right that the creator of the chair im sitting at does not get something for the work i do, i should give royalties to him. oh, and to the desk manufacturer as well. oh and lets not forget the necessary keyboard i write this one, logitech surely deserves my paycheck better than me. after all, they created the tools right?

see how ridiculous this sounds?

superguin200 said:
Phil's just an opinionated guy
if he was just an opinionated guy it would be fine. but he will insut, harass and otherwise express his racism and xenophobia agaisnt everyone he doesnt like.

MinionJoe said:
Is the Big N still claiming money from Let's Plays? Because I've seen a lot of Mario Kart 8 vids lately and it's made me interested in buying a Wii U. But I won't if they're still being dicks about people advertising for them.
they have been doing this for 5 years non-stop. what makes you think it was a one-off event?

Thyunda said:
If you're making money off his content, you owe him a cut. If you're not making money off the videos, you don't owe him anything.
wait so pick one. whether we are making money off his content or we are making money on videos. because lets play videos are not his content.
 

SecondPrize

New member
Mar 12, 2012
1,436
0
0
Strazdas said:
SecondPrize said:
You don't get to just broadcast the entirety of a work and profit from it without permission. Fair Use can be used by reviewers and the like in court but Fish is right here.
noone is broadcasting the source code of his games on youtube (at least not that i know of) and Fish is fully wrong here both morally and legally.
No, nobody is broadcasting the source code. Unfortunately, that means jack shit because they're broadcasting the output of that code, which the developers retain the broadcast rights to.
 

Kuredan

Hingle McCringleberry
Dec 4, 2012
166
0
0
Strazdas said:
So if I make a video series called "Let's Watch" in which I use my own interactions with a movie as the basis for my videos, pausing to make comments, do I owe the movie company revenue for making my videos? Ostensibly I could argue the work is derived from a source but not the source itself and my value added is what I comment about in the video. The answer however is "Yes, I do owe them money." It was called Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and they had to pay quite a bit to get the rights of some pretty terrible movies, So much so that broad swathes of their catalog of episodes are no longer available for sale or broadcast. The rights holder of a piece of work determines when and how that work can be broadcast, edited, and used for any promotional or marketing purposes. The producer of a "Let's Play" style video would first need to know what the rights holders have set for broadcasting rights, etc before they could legally make a video that used the rights holders assets. It is a part of those producer's due diligence to determine what the rights holders have stipulated as far as the use of their work for marketing purposes because the "Let's Play" style videos benefit from the marketing that went into the game and then use the game itself in marketing their personal "brand" eg. "so-and-sos Let's Play of _____"

If I plagiarize a paper, I don't get to claim it as my own work because I typed it myself or that it was my creation, even if I add extra little bits to the source material I used.

You're chainsaw comment is right on the nose, but not for the reason you thought. Yes you would actually owe the chainsaw company money for a video using their product; it happens in TV all the time. Watch the credits of TV show and you'll see all sorts of products used in the show. They don't own the show, but they own the rights to how their products can be displayed or used in public or in broadcasting. Again, these things usually require contracts with the rights holders. I doubt the producers of You Tube videos have even bothered to do due diligence to find out what the rights holder's policies are. Certainly not all of them.
 

Thyunda

New member
May 4, 2009
2,955
0
0
Strazdas said:
Make the video without the content. If you have to pay royalties to use a song, you have to share ad revenue to base your career on somebody else's property. "Free advertising" is absolute bullshit. If you're not invited to advertise, don't take it upon yourself and pretend like you're doing someone a favour.
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
15,489
0
0
Hateren47 said:
Fez Creator: Phil Fish is stealing from hat makers.


SecondPrize said:
Kuredan said:
Thyunda said:
OT: Looks like an online strategy guide to me, kind of like showing people how to do the God of War blade-wall area that gave so many people (Not me, though.) trouble, as they banged their heads against the wall (of blades) in frustration. That kind of visual aid is really helpful. Still, this is nothing more than looking over someone's shoulder as he plays. The ads have no bearing on the game at all. If I wear a Doctor Who t-shirt in an agreement to monetize the fact that I'm showing an ad for Doctor Who, I could do anything I want as long as I'm wearing this t-shirt and saying "Doctor Who is awesome!". The two matters are not actually connected, as one is a game thing and the other is a youtube thing. I could do the same with something like 'Jack fails at playing the accordian - Really Funny!' and it makes no difference at all.
 

Mike Lemond

New member
Jan 20, 2014
14
0
0
How about we all take a breath for a moment and actually have an intelligent discussion for a change? I have to sift through 20 posts full of bile for each coherent response.

Phil Fish indeed has a point, if you would care to discuss.