Nintendo Wants Its Cut

[TAdamson]

Was this handled very well, not really. But by people not getting paid to play the game, more quality LPs will probably be noticed because the person isn't playing it for the money, they're playing it because they like the game. At least Nintendo wasn't like Sega, who outright flagged, and as a result, destroyed several channels just for the mere mention of a game.
If you want more on this topic, I recommend you listen to this podcast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYplcqazWCA

You know this doesn't just affect LPs don't you? News, reviews, commentary and analysis will also be affected by content matching.

 

[TAdamson]

Let me preface this with "I'm not a Nintendo fan." But, I guess it won't bloody matter because I'm going to be painted in that broad brush where I'm either with you, or not.

Did Ninty go overboard for chump change? Yes. Thousand times yes.

However, is everyone blowing this totally out of proportion? Yes.

One. If you are doing LPs for monetary gain, you are in the wrong field. There are different, better ways of getting revenue. From what I gather, LPs take a shit load of time to produce for minimal gain. If you are making money off this, then yes, I think you can try something else that Nintendo can't claim is theirs.

Duo. If you are doing LPs for fun, then how does this change anything? You still put in the effort, but you do it for the sake of your hobby, not because you want money. Will it leave a bad taste in your mouth? I guess, but then no one is forcing a gun to your head to make LPs of Mario or Zelda.

III. Free advertising. I would really like to see how LPs riffing on a game sell more games than professional marketing does. Like, actual numbers, not anecdotal. I mean, if this is true, then the whole marketing team should be fired.

Why were you looking into this LP for this game? Because you were interested in it initially, in which case the LP wouldn't have mattered. Or, you were interested in the people doing the LPs themselves, in which case it wouldn't have mattered what game they covered, because you're watching for the personalities. They could be commenting on a movie, a TV show, or a phone call.

tl;dr, Nintendo is being douches; everyone believes they're the next Hitler. Some perspective might be nice.

It's not just let's plays. It's also news and reviews. This is a "content matching" problem.

 

[Something Amyss]

Nintendo might have the right to do this. They certainly have the power to do this. But either way, it's an asinine and foolhardy move.

Aaaaaand /topic

This is a bad move, even if it's their right. And it might be their right. This is shaky ground.

Has totalbiscuit come down on this yet? I want to see if he'll give up his fellatio towards the games industry now that there's a precedent that directly impacts him.

Surely, surely, we've realised that they think we're just ambulatory wallets-of-plenty with no purpose in "life" other than absorbing whatever dross they spew forth while simultaneously shovelling mountains of dosh their way.

It's funny, because a lot of them seem to think they're entitled to our money and our patronage. I'm surprised we don't see more rage when we don't buy their products in sufficient numbers. Just as they don't owe us anything, we don't owe them anything. Yet so many of them get pissy when a bad product doesn't sell or gets called bad.

I'm not sure if this applies to Nintendo, but the timing that they've decided to pull this at a time when their new flagship is floundering makes me wonder if this is related to those expectations.

Now, when you tell people they aren't getting paid, they're all butt hurt about it and refuse to play the game, even if they love it.

They're just not going to showcase it. There's a difference.

If getting paid is the reason you do video LP's then I don't think you should be doing them in the first place.

If it's the sole reason, perhaps, but that's not the case for everyone. In fact, I seriously doubt anyone has ever gotten into LPs specifically because of profit. It's not exactly easy to get noticed to the point you're worth making money, and I doubt anyone's going to do it for free long enough with enough creative effort to put together something people will notice.

Also, plenty of people WILL be doing Nintendo games after this. Not because they get paid to do it, but because they love doing it.

People who will more than likely get fewer views and be less beneficial to Nintendo as a result.

I mean if you worked 4 years on a horror game and someone completely destroys the atmosphere for people seeing the game for the first time by making random jokes about irrelevant stuff, is it wrong of the developer to say they don't want that video to be making that person a profit?

It's not wrong to say you don't want it. It might not be your right, however, to do anything about it.

I think this reasoning is silly, though. If you're going into a comedy LP for your first viewing of a horror game, you're not going in for the atmosphere. You're going in for the laughs.

The ultimate issue, however, remains one of the selective nature of "right." It might be "right" to alienate your fanbase from alegal or technical standpoint, but it's still a wrong move to make from a consumer/pr standpoint.

And don't the people who work for 4 years on a game have a right to decide who can make a profit on it?

Often times the people who work for 4 years on a game have NO say in who can make profit on it. I hope you understand that. However, once released to the public a certain amount of control is lost. Nintendo is even going after videos where Fair Use should be an issue. And that opens up bigger issues about media coverage.

 

[anaphysik]

I've watched the first episode of the Fallout New Vegas series and it was quite good, although I have to get used to four people talking over the same video. And I kind of like that the commentary is about something rather than the usual LP chat of 'what's that?', 'where do I go?' and 'what do I do? This game is so shit! Oh the [objective] is right here.'. I've already played most of the titles they have covered so I'm watching to see an alternate perspective on it, even if it may make me cry a little

Ha, just wait 'til you get to Alan Wake (Season 8), which has FIVE people talking in it!

New Vegas is probably my favourite season (although the Dead Money part of it was ill-advised and painful...), but really all the seasons are excellent. Walking Dead probably has the best analysis in it (as well as in the comments!), and Fallout 3 probably has the most coherent bile in it.

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

Not much to say, I suppose. Nintendo has every right to do what it wants with the ad revenue from YouTube. It's just a retarded dick move that'll piss off it's fan, and people who do LP's will just migrate to other content so they don't have to deal with the headache of dealing with copyright faff.

By the way, question... Apparently every time one of your videos are flagged for copyright infringement, whether they get taken down or just stripped of ad revenue, apparently your account gets 'copyright infringement' points or something like that, so you'll eventually lose your ability to make cash of ANY of your videos regardless. So apparently if I'm not wrong, even if you're fine with making your videos just for fun and are happy to give Nintendo the proceeds, you're still getting marked down for putting the content up until eventually YouTube automatically pulls out the BanHammer. Can someone explain to me why people should make videos of these games anymore, even for fun, if their account is going to get banned eventually?

 

[Robetid]

You can't say "everyone knows exactly what happens in a Nintendo game" just because you know the general premise the series is based around. I play for gameplay *and* to "see how they turn out". Just a small gripe, though - the article as a whole was good, agreed with it all

You better be careful, nintendo may charge you for using that avatar.

OT: I am generally a Nintendo fan and have been since I first got an NES, but this is the exact thing that can turn away a lifelong fan of their exclusive series. I mean i am one of the few people who bought a Wii-U already, mostly coz it has playbackability and i skipped the Wii. This little stunt of theirs has almost convinced me to do a LP video of me smashing it to hell.

What changed because they did this? Is the fact that you and other people aren't getting PAID to play their games mean that now you can't do them or they aren't good games? If you're buying and playing games just to get some cash, then I don't really get why you even play games. Isn't the point of an LP to show people a game they may never have seen before, or to present it in a new way? And what did the WiiU do in order to deserve being smashed? I'm sorry, but I just find it weird idea to buy a game, and expect to make money from it. I mean its not like you worked 4 years painstakingly adjusting the mechanics for them to be fun.

That isn't the point. Hell I don't even make money doing that, it's principle. People DID spend a lot of time making their videos, they may have spent weeks playing the games and editing the videos. Nintendo should be allowed to step in and snatch that money from them? Didn't Nintendo already get their cut when their game was purchased? I won't support such blantent disrespect towards their fans just for them to be able to collect a few pennies. What they are doing is a step away from stealing in my opinion.

 

[IKWerewolf]

There were two ways Nintendo could have handled this, they could have had conversations with the people that play let's plays and actually used them to make money by giving them games in advance to do let's plays previews with; preivews work, that's why I want Anomaly 2 and Sanctum 2, its you tube that's why I bought War of the Overworld on Early Access it is these reasons that I have buzz for a game or hate it's guts.

Secondly, they could have had conversations with the Lets Players and agreed a reasonable Royalties system for games that they got revenue from, say 1% of revenue from Nintendo Let's Plays go to the company.

Instead they went the Draconian route. Not because they want to be stupid or evil, but because it was the route that was the easiest... think about it, no legal costs for applying for bans, revenue coming in from Advertisements, no need to communicate with human beings, win win all around...

... and the easy route never works in the long term. The short term they will get a few thousand but the moment Nintendo adverts appear on Let's Plays, savvy viewers will tip off the LPers and immediately the LPers will declare that if this course of action is continued then they will have no choice but to STOP PLAYING NINTENDO GAMES and we all know the strength of Let's Plays, Previews and First Impressions can sometimes be more powerful than IGN and Gamespot combined.

 

[SandroTheMaster]

I use the term LP to very broadly cover a video in which a game is played, by a person or persons, with commentary. Some people call their videos walkthroughs or guides or what have you, and I guess scathing criticism is covered too.

I've watched the first episode of the Fallout New Vegas series and it was quite good, although I have to get used to four people talking over the same video. And I kind of like that the commentary is about something rather than the usual LP chat of 'what's that?', 'where do I go?' and 'what do I do? This game is so shit! Oh the [objective] is right here.'. I've already played most of the titles they have covered so I'm watching to see an alternate perspective on it, even if it may make me cry a little

And there must be puns. At the dawn of the Universe there were puns. There are always...puns.

Lucky you.

In any case, welcome to the Spoiler Warning community. They're about to start Tomb Raider (which for me it means I must advance my schedule and buy it beforehand. I did it with Deus Ex too and wasn't disappointed, heh). Dishonored was pretty positive as well, now that I think about it. At least when it deals with the gameplay.

(Oh, and I'm not kidding about Bioshock. Poor, poor Mumbles, she once loved that game.)

 

[Lilani]

The only reason I paid any attention to TF2 and L4D is because of G-Mod videos. I got into watching the videos people made on YouTube, and it made me interested in the games and what they had to offer. These videos directly led to me purchasing TF2, L4D, L4D2, and Garry's Mod itself. And subsequently, I have spent way too much money on hats, keys, and accessories within TF2. Just like the way Valve has been vocal about piracy being an issue of customer service rather than an issue of theft, I think they should point to their community of G-Modders and be like, "Hey guys, you want some free viral marketing that'll never stop producing new material? Then let people use your games and talk about them."

Other publishers will probably say this in response:


Because:


But Valve will just carry on, making all the moneys, and going to their favorite vacation destination.

 

[rob_simple]

Nintendo must really be starting to worry about the WiiU if they're opening up an extortion racket.

Call me naive but I always thought of Nintendo as the friendly company, willing to sit down and actually listen to gamers; if they'd requested a cut of ad revenue from LP'ers as a royalty fee for sampling their IP then I could square that away.

Instead they've decided to go with 'give me back my ball or I'll fucking sue the life out of you.' Not that I need anymore reason to lose interest in Nintendo, but this would be a pretty big nail in the coffin.

 

[SandroTheMaster]

Let me preface this with "I'm not a Nintendo fan." But, I guess it won't bloody matter because I'm going to be painted in that broad brush where I'm either with you, or not.

Did Ninty go overboard for chump change? Yes. Thousand times yes.

However, is everyone blowing this totally out of proportion? Yes.

One. If you are doing LPs for monetary gain, you are in the wrong field. There are different, better ways of getting revenue. From what I gather, LPs take a shit load of time to produce for minimal gain. If you are making money off this, then yes, I think you can try something else that Nintendo can't claim is theirs.

Duo. If you are doing LPs for fun, then how does this change anything? You still put in the effort, but you do it for the sake of your hobby, not because you want money. Will it leave a bad taste in your mouth? I guess, but then no one is forcing a gun to your head to make LPs of Mario or Zelda.

III. Free advertising. I would really like to see how LPs riffing on a game sell more games than professional marketing does. Like, actual numbers, not anecdotal. I mean, if this is true, then the whole marketing team should be fired.

Why were you looking into this LP for this game? Because you were interested in it initially, in which case the LP wouldn't have mattered. Or, you were interested in the people doing the LPs themselves, in which case it wouldn't have mattered what game they covered, because you're watching for the personalities. They could be commenting on a movie, a TV show, or a phone call.

tl;dr, Nintendo is being douches; everyone believes they're the next Hitler. Some perspective might be nice.

Uh... you know there's a difference between voluntary work and slavery right?

Let's say I like a product. Then I chose to tell people around me about the product and why I like it. I just want to have this product I like to be more successful.

Then the company that makes the product hears I'm doing this, approaches me, and says they love what I'm doing, but that I'll only be able to keep it up if I start taking their product and selling it directly to everyone I meet, and that all the profit I get from doing this should go directly to them. And they consider this a charitable act because they didn't just send me to jail for talking about their product without their permission.

There's a very different feel to knowing you're doing something out for yourself and then knowing you're just working for someone else for free while they heap all the benefits of your work and you get squat.

Then there's the people who're actually making money out of this. Regardless of they doing the LP to earn money, this just means that you can now monetize on Let's Plays. You're actually arguing that people shouldn't be paid if they like their work? It is still work. It is not all that different from parodies. Should all comedians now be paid squat and whenever they choose to make fun of something that exists, giving all their earnings to the subject of their work? This is mental. It is SOPA all over again.

I'd rather have the videos pulled. In one case, the company is just seeing the LP as a threat to their licenses and outright bullying their customers from using their product in that way. In the other, the company is trying to double their customers as slave labor being auctioned by YouTube, gift-wrapped for them to take and squeeze every penny they can out of them.

Just to make it clear, it wouldn't be a problem at all if they just negotiated instead of going straight to outright exploitation. But exploitation is just too damn easy to pass up, I guess.

 

[Andrew_C]

I don't buy nearly as many games as many people, but almost every game I've bought in the last 2 or 3 years has been as a result of a let's play. Either that or I have checked out let's plays to confirm my interest in a game I heard about. About the only ones that weren't were part of Steam sale bundles with games I wanted to buy because of a let's play.

I don't think its stretching it to say that's fairly typical behaviour these days. Nintendo really are shooting themselves in the foot. At least they aren't taking the games down, but I wouldn't be surprised if lot of LPers take down their videos of Nintendo Games as a result of this.

EDIt spleng

 

[Vale]

I heard this thing a couple times that Japanese game developers in general (and Nintendo in particular) react extremely badly to criticism of any sort and just tend to shut it out to an extent even greater than your regular-ass "western" developers. It's probably just idle racism though.

... it's hard to comment on Shamus' writings because saying "hit the nail on the head" is a little cheap.

 

[Dork Angel]

Imagine if you bought a car and decided to use it as a taxi. Suddenly the manufacturer turns up and wants the money you make since your passengers are getting to drive in it without buying it for themselves. Oh, and when you decide to sell it, they find a way to stop the keys working so the new owner has to pay them to get it to work again...

 

[Verlander]

These seems like a situation that youtube have agreed into? So why not host the videos privately and generate revenue that way? You could even put up a youtube video advertising your own page? A suggestion is all. If you are providing a critical review, I'd imagine the material can be legally used, in the same way that critics use film clips etc. You'd just not be able to film the whole thing, but I refuse to believe that there are that many people willing to sit through 5+ hours of someone else playing and reviewing the game.

 

[tiakeravelonna]

Extremely well summed up Shamus, let's hope the Let's Players follow through on a non-nintendo policy across the board. Maybe the company will realize what an asinine mistake they made.

One of the LPers I follow has explicitly said that he will not stop LPing Nintendo games. I think he said the group he belongs to won't stop, either. I think he loves Nintendo's games too much, and that's what his audience expects.

 

[Roxas1359]

Couldn't have said it any better myself Shamus. The one thing that I see a lot of is that people think that doing LPs is the easiest thing ever. Sure it is, if you want your video to look terrible. The amount of time LPers put into there editing can do a long way. In this day and age it is very difficult to get your Let's Plays noticed, and the cost of equipment can be staggering. Sure you can get by with just a Dazzle, which by itself is still around $50-75, and a terrible mic but you won't get many views and the end result will not look the best. When it comes down to the equipment to make high quality LPs like the ones people like Chuggaconroy make the costs are very high. An HD capture card, be it Roxio, Elgato, or an HD PVR, will cost you from $100-$250 at times. Then for high quality mics then the costs are more, Blue Yeti's for example go for about $150 or so. Then there is the editing software that you need because let's face it using Windows Live Movie Maker is better for you than using the editor's that an HD capture card comes with. Finally you have to put a lot of time into the editing to make the video presentable, and also come up with witty or informative commentary.
In summary doing LPs nowadays is actually a very long and time consuming process. I've been doing LPs myself for almost a year now and when I see people around here dismissing the effort many of us put into it and just say that it's easy kinda irritates me.

Now when it comes to the Nintendo thing it'd be reasonable for them to want just a cut of the profit, but the fact that they are taking all of the revenue, slapping an ad in front of the video you've created, and are basically being told "make more money for us" is sickening. Now I don't monetize my videos, never have for any of them, but I've actually had some Nintendo ads put in front of my Luigi's Mansions Let's Play despite me not monetize it and that infuriates me more. Really what I've not liked about YouTube when it comes to Let's Plays is when they made it so that every account is put under as a "partner" when in reality that's not true. The LPers who make actual money from this are part of networks like The Gaming Station, Fullscreen Arcade, Machinima, etc. The problem is that those networks use the money to sustain themselves so that they can grow. And it's not easy to get accepted to those networks a lot of the time.

All in all Nintendo may legally be in the right, but by doing this it's showing a bad side of them. Plus if this starts working what's gonna happen if other developers and publishers decide that they wanna do the same thing? What would happen to TGS or Roosterteeth then? I guess though perhaps some of the other LPers can go to Game Anyone, more traffic on Game Anyone wouldn't hurt at all.

 

[fieryshadowcard]

So if I make a video that goes viral, wherein I'm doing some really nifty tricks with a hula hoop, does that mean the hula hoop companies suddenly want in on my revenue too, even though I've probably encouraged quite a few viewers to go out and buy a hula hoop (or 10... it was a really awesome trick) so they can reproduce what I've done?

 

[Dreadjaws]

Thank you. Thank you so much for this article

I have seen far too many Nintendo apologists banging on about it being copyrighted material, it being Nintendo & YouTube's decision to make, & any other reason they can think up that won't alienate them at the next Nintendo press event.

I've observed shockingly few people publicly saying, right-wrong-or-indifferent, what a horrible idea this is.

I've watch many LP's that impressed me; I then purchased the game I just saw

Nintendo has been skating on the goodwill of nostalgia for a long time and, for a lot of fans, it just ran out.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm not a Nintendo fan, because I am, but I don't have a blind devotion. If they screw up, I will admit they screwed up (I'm looking at you Metroid: Other M). That said, I don't think what they did was this horrible.

I will admit that Nintendo really should have handled this better, but I don't think they're bad people because of it.
Nothing will change about this other than some people won't get paid to show someone else's content. When did Let's Plays become less about showing people a game you really love to other people and more about the cash? And is Nintendo really going to alienate all of its fans because some people aren't getting paid to play their games on Youtube? Is this going to affect the casual market? Are people going to stop buying their games simply because people aren't getting paid to play them? Are the videos going to be gone? No.

Was this handled very well, not really. But by people not getting paid to play the game, more quality LPs will probably be noticed because the person isn't playing it for the money, they're playing it because they like the game. At least Nintendo wasn't like Sega, who outright flagged, and as a result, destroyed several channels just for the mere mention of a game.
If you want more on this topic, I recommend you listen to this podcast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYplcqazWCA

OK, you need to stop talking. Right now. You're only making a fool of yourself by doing exactly what Shamus talked about in the article when he mentioned the apologists. I've been a Nintendo apologist for years, I've defended almost every bad decision they've made before, but this is a terrible, terrible one and there's no defending it.

First of all, it outs Nintendo as being completely out of touch with this generation. They've been more or less avoiding this barely, but this time it's very clear they have no idea how people behave.

Second, stop trying to pretend this is about LPers being greedy. Believe it or not, LPing is a job for a lot of people. That's what they do for a living. They don't "demand to get paid to play games", they're doing it to inform people, they have to compose and edit videos and music, they need to play correctly in order to not bore their audiences or discourage them and they paid for those games (it's not like Nintendo gave the games to them for free), and it's pretty much impossible to do this regularly AND having another job, so they're spending time and money in order to bring people free publicity for Nintendo, there's no situation here in which they are evil ones.

Also, what's with the ridiculous remark about fart jokes or making a profit about a game they hate? Who does that? If there's anyone who does that it's the absolute minority (as in, less than 0.001%). If you hate a game you're not going to be playing it for money when you can make the same money by playing a game you love. And if there's people who prefer to watch a stupid video with fart jokes than a good one about the same subject with interesting and funny commentary when both are available for free they're not enough to warrant a real profit for anyone.

Shamus here is making an intelligent analysis of a very real situation, while you're doing preposterous remarks based on ridiculous assumptions, faux logic and outright lies. Excuse me if I can't take your opinion as relevant.

 

[Catalyst6]

Second, stop trying to pretend this is about LPers being greedy. Believe it or not, LPing is a job for a lot of people. That's what they do for a living. They don't "demand to get paid to play games", they're doing it to inform people, they have to compose and edit videos and music, they need to play correctly in order to not bore their audiences or discourage them and they paid for those games (it's not like Nintendo gave the games to them for free), and it's pretty much impossible to do this regularly AND having another job, so they're spending time and money in order to bring people free publicity for Nintendo, there's no situation here in which they are evil ones.

Lping is a job? No, no, no. It's a hobby that you might get lucky and make a bit of money off of. It doesn't matter how much work you put into an LP, the entire foundation of the medium is based off of skirting copyright. Dropping out of a real job to make silly internet videos then being screwed when your revenue dries up doesn't make you a victim, it makes you an idiot with an incredible lack of foresight.