Jimquisition: Copyright War

[RJ Dalton]

I'll second that sentiment. What with Kickstarter and whatever other avenues I'm probably missing, publishers aren't needed anymore, and considering their general behavior, I'd say plenty of people don't want them anymore.

Not only are they not needed, they are now actively harming the creative community by pinholing the content that's allowed to be published. The indie community proves that strange games that break the so called rules can be successful, but publishers still insist on the holding to old, outdated models that were never true to begin with. And if books like Twilight prove anything, it's that being published isn't a guarantee of real quality.
But more than even that, they don't actually produce anything. They merely profit from the works of others, taking money away from those who actually do the real work and stomping down on anyone who tries to do things differently.

Publishers are parasites on the human imagination and I say it's about time to pluck them off and discard them.

 

[Tono Makt]

Maybe they just don't like the fact that a video made by a random bigshot on YouTube can null millions worth of advertising in a matter of hours. We've seen Amazon removing negative customer reviews of new EA games multiple times (oh sorry, I forgot, that was that ominous "glitch"), and let's play's are basically the same. You just get to see what people like and dislike in motion rather than reading about it.

Going to lukewarmly agree with this sentiment. I'm ambivalent towards advertising at the best of times, but the cult of personality that can follow some online personalities can turn one man's opinion into gaming fact. If I were to create a video game, I would be extremely hesitant to allow anyone to use video from it in their own video's. In the end I would allow it, but it would be something that would cause me a great deal of stress. (Unless I was a billionaire and could afford to have people monitoring Youtube and more popular gaming sites to see if it was being used. Then I might be able to control the content to a degree which would keep my stress levels down.)

On the other hand, I want the Jeremy Jahn's and Angry Joe's out there able to review things they think are horrible and are able to give their honest opinions about it - and use gameplay footage to give evidence to their opinions. I want them to be able to deconstruct scenes in games that they feel is inferior, so that they aren't simply saying "This Sucks!" but are saying "This Sucks! (insert gameplay footage) What is that? That's so wrong! (insert more gameplay footage) WTF, Developer? (insert more gameplay footage) Seriously? Did you even think this through?". If I were to create a video game, and had the resources to have some sort of control over how the content was used, I might encourage reviewers like that to use footage from my game because I might be able to get some honest and useful criticism... as well as places to start with DLC patches, fixes and updates.

So... really conflicted on this topic.

 

[rbstewart7263]

You know if it benefits pewdiepie its a bad thing. I swear is this even a sustainable model? I dont think it is and I hope tht it fails miserably.

seriously though is it?

 

[NWJ94]

Eh, let em.

Murky copyright laws aside any company dumb enough to do this is just shooting themselves in the foot. Free marketing is free marketing and scrambling to gain the small sums of money youtube personalities make in exchange for forfeiting the free coverage of respected third party individuals recommending and demonstrating your product is a remarkably short sighted, and laughably idiotic, move.

Let the companies stupid enough to do this lose their free marketing and the companies smart enough profit. Capitalism at its best.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

Yay! I browse to the Escapist even when there's no Jim planned just in the hope that he may have done some extra stuff - and he has!
Also, yeah we don't need them. They need us. They need us to buy their shit. But we can just blank them and buy less of their games. We can stream other devs stuff and make their stuff popular and make it go viral. Keep prohibiting us and we shall (to your dismay) crap on you and go somewhere else and make other peoples stuff exciting to others.
We're fussed for a minute. You loose free advertising for ever >

 

[Sylocat]

Not that it matters in the end, but we really have no way of knowing how many of these videos are actually getting flagged by the publishers and how many are just getting automatically pulled the broken and glitchy pattern-matching bots... And the publishers aren't the ones who forced YouTube to implement those godawful systems in the first place (that credit goes to Viacom).

 

[Foolery]

Honestly, it was only a matter of time. I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. The fact that publishers would use their legal powers to get a slice of the revenue or shut it down, shouldn't be a shock. It should be expected. I hope LPers have backup plans and jobs.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

What's really idiotic is that the Publishers would ultimately benefit if they gave these channels a little leeway.

 

[senordesol]

It's so bizarre that companies would be this gleefully complicit in aiding their competition. Now I could dig a company's argument that piracy of their product -at least in theory- loses them money given that people are enjoying an un-negotiated complete commercial experience.

But LPs? Trailer Footage? Reviews? The only way I can conceive of that hurting a company is if a product sucks and the footage proves it. But then, they've got bigger problems don't they?

I can only hope that we see an explosion of lesser-known and otherwise under-covered titles that realize people showing off their stuff only means more dollars for them. That these bloated, anachronistic dinosaurs of a bygone era finally collapse under their own weight to make room for the more agile and savvy species.

 

[VonBrewskie]

Good on yah Jim. Always happy to have an extra slice of fuck-off pie in my week. Stand your ground homie. We'll stand with you, (and others of your ilk) wallets at the ready.

 

[synobal]

The fastest way to get me to not buy your game is to make me watch pewdiepie.

 

[BabySinclair]

content irrelevant

I can tell tis the season, your gif is back.

OT: Wait... publishers are being pricks? I thought they stood up for consumers' rights and Jim was doing a sarcasm show... well that changes things...

But this isn't really a surprise now is it? Publishers have been trying to control every aspect of "their" games. They control the development, marketing, distribution, and they want to control it post-launch. Hopefully publishers will start dying off in time without game developers being forced to fold and this whole middle man /gatekeeper BS can get resolved.

 

[Knight Templar]

Good. Lemme say that again: Gooooooooooooooood. I hope the publishers go buck wild and punish every LPer they can for every little reason they can. And then, when they come back whining that the indie crowd is growing larger because of a growth in free press and that they want a slice of that because their sales have dropped, we can tell them to go suck on it.

Here's your rope, publishers. Have fun.

I'm worried that the damage already done by that point will be too much. If the system is bent over backwards to serve them, it won't matter if some decide to stop making use of it, the system is still broken and easly abused by design.

 

[BakedSardine]

I don't see what publishers are going to gain from this. They aren't going to produce videos like the ones they are taking down, so it's irrelevant that YouTubers are making money off playing their game because they have no way to move that revenue to their coffers. It is simply money that is being taken out of the marketplace - less money for YouTubers, less money for Google, and ultimately less money for publishers for anyone who might be influenced to buy a game from a Let's Play video. The only way they could capitalize on getting that revenue is in producing their own videos or perhaps loading up complete walkthroughs of games - not likely.

It's NOT like showing a movie you buy and charging people to watch it in any way - or whatever asinine analogy they might be making. Games are simply a different medium.

 

[Altorin]

Maybe it's time for an alternative to YouTube, since the site seems to be becoming rapidly taken over by corporations and Google +. Anyone got any suggestions for a viable alternative video site?

Unfortunately that's basically not going to happen. Any video site hosted on the servers of the size that would be required to hold the raw amount of video footage on youtube would probably have to be owned by a corporation of sorts.

Which isn't to say there aren't web sites with the same capabilities as youtube but they absolutely lack the capacity.

yeah, except that it doesn't really NEED *ALL* of Youtube's server capabilities. Youtube is just utterly glutted with trash that noone watches. Ever. Stuff people just upload for themselves or whatever. Last statistic I heard on it, 48 hours of footage was uploaded to youtube every hour. So really, it's impossible for less then 50 people working non-stop to watch it all, and I imagine 90% of it is total trollop horseshit.

Not to mention, a few big names move house, that will benefit the third party immensely, allowing them to grow at the expense of Youtube.

 

[gyroscopeboy]

I know it's not true for many other people, but when I watch a full Let's PLay, I then DON'T buy the game. It's why i've only bought one game this entire year, and that was GTA V. I guess those count as lost sales?

 

[Sanunes]

I am not sure what bothers me more, is that the Publishers (or someone on their behalf) is making all these claims or that YouTube made their system so automated this can happen. I think it falls more to YouTube, for like anyone if a Publisher can find something to exploit they will just like a person can to a game because they can. To me this should be something Google should look at improving for they might lose more then the Publishers for if people can't find the content they want on YouTube they are going to go elsewhere and then they don't get their ad revenue.

 

[Fearzone]

I was waiting for this. Lately, if a game mostly focuses on story, and the gameplay is just a pacing element one must perform to move the story along, I just watch the Let's Play. A good Let's Play'er will improve the experience with witty commentary, over me sitting by myself jumping through the hoops I need to in order to learn more of the story.

As someone who prefers that games deliver good gameplay rather than a narrative, I don't mind depriving narrative game makers of their revenue in this way, particularly while it is perfectly legal on YouTube. Mostly I just watch the first 3 or 4 episodes before I decide the narrative isn't very good, but sometimes the story is really good, so I go the whole way.

It is totally understandable to me that the owners of the content would have a problem with this. I'm still rooting YouTuber's, because it is a good way to experience games freely that I wouldn't buy.

 

[likalaruku]

Viacom eventually either gave up or came to some sort of agreement about people posting music videos, so publishers will be forced to cave in after a year or so as well, because if you start taking their videos down, they'll just reupload them on a different account or tell everyone to upload their videos to their own accounts or open their own sites & host their videos on Blip, DailyMotion, Veoh, or Vimeo, moving it to another video hosting site any time it gets taken down.

 

[MoD1212]

The game publishers might not be the ones flagging the videos tho, Capcom has at least tweeted that they aren't make the claims and are looking into it.

https://twitter.com/intent/user?original_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fkotaku.com%2Fyoutube-channels-crippled-by-copyright-claims-1480717110&screen_name=Capcom_Unity&tw_i=410559475959885824&tw_p=tweetembed

According to this Kotaku article it's the music in the video that's getting flagged so it's more likely music publishers that are behind this which is not any more surprising or wrong.

http://kotaku.com/youtube-channels-crippled-by-copyright-claims-1480717110?utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Facebook&utm_source=Kotaku_Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow