Let's Plays under attack!

[Georgie_Leech]

Recently, several semi-famous Let's Players have been taken down off of YouTube, due to copyright claims. The most recent victim seems to have been Chuggaconroy. But according to this article these claims have been fraudulent! Let's Players are under attack by a person orpersons unknown who, for whatever reason, are trying to get them taken down! We need to contact YouTube and get these people back online! Who's with me?

 

[MBergman]

Let's Players? I have no idea what we are talking about!

 

[the_pleasure_is_mine]

Let's Players? I have no idea what we are talking about!

I think he's referring to the people who make 'Let's Play!' videos. Where they film themselves doing a blind runthrough of a game with them providing a running commentary.

 

[squid5580]

I have never understood why anyone would watch them. Either you are interested in the game so why would you watch someone else play it. Or you aren't interested and then why would you watch it in the first place. Although I am a spoilerphobe.

 

[Kavonde]

I have never understood why anyone would watch them. Either you are interested in the game so why would you watch someone else play it. Or you aren't interested and then why would you watch it in the first place. Although I am a spoilerphobe.

Well, lots of reasons.

1) Getting some older games to run on Vista and Windows 7 can drive a grown man to tears, whereas with an LP, someone's already gone through that hassle for you.

2) A lot of older games are just bad by today's standards. Look at Ultima 6 and its utterly impenetrable UI, or the blatantly cheating AI from strategy games like Fantasy Empires.

3) Some of the people who do Let's Plays are genuinely hilarious. I refer you to TheSpoonyOne's SWAT4 LP [http://spoonyexperiment.com/category/lets-play/swat-4/page/2/].

4) And sometimes they take a game with a really dense plot and make sense of it. See Scorchy's (written) Let's Play of Knights of the Old Republic 2 [http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/KOTOR%202/].

5) And sometimes they just take a really overrated game with an absolutely terrible story and rip it to shreds. Like Shamus Young's Spoiler Warning series on Fallout 3 [http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=7926].

 

[dthvirus]

I have never understood why anyone would watch them. Either you are interested in the game so why would you watch someone else play it. Or you aren't interested and then why would you watch it in the first place. Although I am a spoilerphobe.

I find LPs kinda funny. There's one for Borderlands by Skorch82 and a friend of his, and we all know how Borderlands co-op is. They squabble over guns, call each other weird names, try to extort money out of each other in exchange for being revived; it's all good fun.

 

[MasterMongoose0]

I hope NintendoCapriSun gets unsuspended, along with Chuggaconroy. They're the only two that I've truly watched.

Seems lame that someone would try to do that though. Nice job Youtube.

 

[hazabaza1]

Well, I'm safe, since I'm not a popular LPer.

Also, *cough* [http://www.youtube.com/user/MrHaza2]

 

[Valdsator]

Hopefully OverTheGun doesn't lose his account. He's an awesome Let's Player.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Well, I'm since, since I'm not a popular LPer.

Also, *cough* [http://www.youtube.com/user/MrHaza2]

Was that your channel? Because that intro video's music was so damn awesome I'm going to watch some of your other stuff. I'll get back to you after I've watched enough to have an opinion.

 

[DanDeFool]

Okay. What, if anything, CAN we do about it?

If YouTube lets people just throw copyright infringement notices around like nobody's business, then it's not like we can do anything to stop them.

Maybe contact YouTube about it? If so, who do we contact?

 

[hazabaza1]

Well, I'm since, since I'm not a popular LPer.

Also, *cough* [http://www.youtube.com/user/MrHaza2]

Was that your channel? Because that intro video's music was so damn awesome I'm going to watch some of your other stuff. I'll get back to you after I've watched enough to have an opinion.

'Tis. Got the music from Newgrounds though, not mine.
Thanks for checking it out. I'm not great, but I hope to entertain.

 

[Kavonde]

Fallout 3 is NOT over-rated.

Really. Man, could've fooled me, what with all the Game of the Year awards and legions of loyal fanboys.

Ah well. I'll just go explore some mostly-intact buildings that survived a nuclear war and the intervening 200 years. Maybe I'll fight some supermutants that were created by the Enclave for the Evulz long before the Master ever crawled out of an FEV tank, and when I get hit, I'll stop and eat a few dozen boxes of instant rice that had been sitting in a locker for two centuries. Later, I'll need to find a magical suitcase that could be used to found a utopian paradise and instead use it to power a machine designed to clean radiation from water, because, you know, filtering it through some mud or something just wouldn't cut it. And it's not like I have a robot butler than can create an infinite supply of clean water, albeit with a little recharge time, so examining his systems and copying that technology instead of wasting an entire GECK would be out of the question. And when I go to plug this magic suitcase in, I'll need to go myself, rather than send my highly intelligent super mutant buddy who's immune to radiation, at least until I pay $15.00 for a DLC add-on pack.

Hey, maybe I'll run into an old favorite character from Fallout 1 & 2, who, despite being nothing more than a minor and easily missed sidequest, was apparently important enough to Bethesda that they had to base the game's timeline entirely around making sure he could make an appearance.

These are the sorts of things that good Let's Plays pick up on, y'see.

 

[squid5580]

I have never understood why anyone would watch them. Either you are interested in the game so why would you watch someone else play it. Or you aren't interested and then why would you watch it in the first place. Although I am a spoilerphobe.

Well, lots of reasons.

1) Getting some older games to run on Vista and Windows 7 can drive a grown man to tears, whereas with an LP, someone's already gone through that hassle for you.

2) A lot of older games are just bad by today's standards. Look at Ultima 6 and its utterly impenetrable UI, or the blatantly cheating AI from strategy games like Fantasy Empires.

3) Some of the people who do Let's Plays are genuinely hilarious. I refer you to TheSpoonyOne's SWAT4 LP [http://spoonyexperiment.com/category/lets-play/swat-4/page/2/].

4) And sometimes they take a game with a really dense plot and make sense of it. See Scorchy's (written) Let's Play of Knights of the Old Republic 2 [http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/KOTOR%202/].

5) And sometimes they just take a really overrated game with an absolutely terrible story and rip it to shreds. Like Shamus Young's Spoiler Warning series on Fallout 3 [http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=7926].

I didn't consider older games when I made that post to be honest. I followed Spoony's FF8 and most of his stuff except for Swat4 (I watched the first ep and didn't care for it) although I never considered them to be a "Let's Play". I considered it more "lets mock it". I was just thinking why would you want to watch someone play through an entire game. Especially when it would be pretty much improv. That I think is where I disconnected. What Spoony and probably Shamus did was not a blind run but they studied the game(s) beforehand and made a script. A few guys playing blind and reacting accordingly would have me thinking WTF am I doing watching this when I could be playing it.

 

[RanD00M]

Well they better leave Augustgirl15 alone.I have yet to finish her SS2 one.And I am about to start on her Mass Effect one.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Personally I would like a lot more verification of this story before I believe it. Let's Plays often seem to me to have a lot of content from the games they are LPing, which I am fairly certain would violate their copyright. If used parodically or as a short clip for a review they'd be protected, but ten solid minutes of footage from a game is probably not covered, which would mean that the claims are not in the least fraudulent. They might be a directed attack nonetheless, but they wouldn't be incorrect.

Also, they claim they YouTube takes down videos that are flaggged automatically without checking them. I would like definitive proof, with evidence and references to support it, before I would ever believe that. Because as they said it would open the system to heavy abuse, and if it was the case and the knowledge was widespread then anyone would be able to take down anything they wanted, and YouTube would have gone under ages ago.

So yeah, I'm marking this one with heavy amounts of skepticism.

 

[Kavonde]

I didn't consider older games when I made that post to be honest. I followed Spoony's FF8 and most of his stuff except for Swat4 (I watched the first ep and didn't care for it) although I never considered them to be a "Let's Play". I considered it more "lets mock it". I was just thinking why would you want to watch someone play through an entire game. Especially when it would be pretty much improv. That I think is where I disconnected. What Spoony and probably Shamus did was not a blind run but they studied the game(s) beforehand and made a script. A few guys playing blind and reacting accordingly would have me thinking WTF am I doing watching this when I could be playing it.

True, yeah. Most people aren't great at the improv, though (not to be a completely unabashed fanboy) Spoony's actually really good at just rambling off the cuff in an entertaining way. Still, I couldn't really see the point in sitting down and watching an LP of a new game, unless you knew beforehand that it was really bad or you just had zero interest in playing it yourself.

 

[yankeefan19]

Youtube doesn't even CHECK these reports? Good lord. When this shit gets out, there's going to be a HUGE innundation of these attacks.

How could they NOT EVEN CHECK?

Youtube is kinda stupid about copyright infringement. For instance, DBZ Abridged had a couple of videos with all sound removed for, what I assume is, a couple of sounds or a song that played for 5 seconds. And of course it all happened after it became popular and well enjoyed by many.
OT: That is a shame that they're taking off the let's play videos. I don't think it's copyright infringement at all. I mean, after all, they are technically advertising a game (I often watch the first few episodes of a lets play to help me decide if I want to buy a game or not).

 

[kebab4you]

Who? o.o I thought I seen close to all let´s player on youtube but never heard about that guy. Oh well as long as Tatsu,Zeta and Kiko stays alive I don't need any other LPers

 

[Miles Tormani]

I've never been that much of a fan of Let's Plays, though Brickroad's MMX4 one was entertaining. I also enjoyed his 150% speed runs. I am of the opinion that the commentary needs to be scripted, or at the very least, recorded separately from the gameplay. It tends to produce better results than improv commentary.

Unfortunately, the high ground probably goes to YouTube in this particular situation, since Let's Plays by their very nature have high amounts of gameplay footage, which may be considered copyrighted material. Of course, why they can't get away with it while uploads of cutscenes ripped straight from the game can is a different matter entirely...

EDIT: I'm more angry at how YouTube had taken a habit to pulling some of the How Not to Play Hitman videos.