91 replies to this topic

[SkyLizardGirl]

http://www.polygon.c...cash-share-plan

 

A news article i just saw plus+ some news videos.

 

http://www.forbes.co...ap-in-the-face/

 

 

Is nintendo trying to get money off everyone posting Nintendo based videos nowadays?

Threatening to take down Nintendo based footage if you are not partnered with the rich gamer creators program.

 

They just announced a very bizarre plan.'  I had noticed today on youtube, somebody is speaking about what Nintendo is doing.

 

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=Ov4KfpsSwh0

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=6yVLb_Y_0jg

Edited by SkyLizardGirl, 30 January 2015 - 07:13 PM.

[ZeldaPlayer]

This is so disappointing! He really attacked Nintendo?!

[Haylee]

This is so disappointing! He really attacked Nintendo?!

No.

 

He's simply criticizing a problem that Nintendo has had for a while, and their method for solving said problem, and quite frankly, I agree with him.

 

Honestly, this whole issue about Nintendo's problem with Youtube video monetization shouldn't be about PewDiePie at all, the poster of the thread simply chose to link an article where PewDiePie criticizes a problem that a lot of others are having.

 

EDIT: Based on the link, it just seems like you read the link and posted.

Edited by Nexas, 30 January 2015 - 08:40 PM.

[Chris Miller]

I don't watch the man's channel, but he is pretty much the #1 guy on Youtube, or at least way up there.  Nintendo has failed to realize that with all the people he reaches, plus all the other gamer channels, they could deal Nintendo some serious PR damage if they wanted to.

Edited by Chris Miller, 31 January 2015 - 02:00 AM.

[Eddard McHorn Van-Schnuder]

I'm not a fan of PewDiePie's content either, but we all know the personality he puts on in his videos is just a character - the guy behind it seems like a pretty smart and down to earth guy, despite his enormous amount of money and fame. I'm inclined to agree with him, but it's not news that Nintendo are doing everything backwards.

 

This is so disappointing! He really attacked Nintendo?!

Wait, so you think it's disappointing that he 'attacked' Nintendo, or that Nintendo is doing something worth critizicing? Because Nintendo have been stumbling along for a couple of years now, they've gone from one mistake to another. These days there are very few things I can applaud Nintendo for, and that is sad, but even though I'm a fan I'm not blind and I'm not going to pretend everything is okay just because I happen to like Zelda and Pokemon. A true fan is willing to criticize when something goes wrong. That's the only way you can ever hope to see something change for the better.

[SUCCESSOR]

I read the guys words in the article and really it just seems self righteous and whiny. He seems to think that because of the potential ad revenue he generates for Nintendo that he (and others who do the same) shouldn't be held accountable for how they earn their money. This guys has made a Shit-Ton(that is a scientific measurement) of money. When you build your business on someone else IP you either scratch the back that you are riding or your stand the chance of losing out completely.

 

I am not saying Nintendo doesn't benefit from LPs. I believe Nintendo should encourage people to do them. It would be preferable that it didn't require a policy that could turn into or be perceived as favoritism and blacklisting. Any system of asking for permissions could do/seem to be that. Nintendo does benefits, but let's not pretend LPers don't also. It make sense to share revenue. PewDiePie probably now makes more money than I or most of you will ever see. He built it off of other people's work and he(and the others who do the same) should be giving back where they took. Whether or not it be modern convention or the popular way of the day.

Edited by SUCCESSOR, 31 January 2015 - 06:08 PM.

[Shane]

I read the guys words in the article and really it just seems self righteous and whiny. He seems to think that because of the potential ad revenue he generates for Nintendo that he (and others who do the same) shouldn't be held accountable for how they earn their money. This guys has made a Shit-Ton(that is a scientific measurement) of money. When you build your business on someone else IP you either scratch the back that you are riding or your stand the chance of losing out completely.

PewDiePie didn't say this problem would affect him, but channels that are a lot smaller. Just wanted to point that out.

 

--

 

It's clear Nintendo has full rights to their work in any form of context, and there is no disagreeing with that. However, law versus moral is a key thing here. Sometimes a course of action, regardless of how right and justified it is, will spark a lot of negativity and cause devastating effects. All it takes is another company to follow the same footsteps, and then another... and a lot of YouTube channels will face a lot of motivational problems and YouTube will hit another rage episode much like we saw with Google+. And I have an extreme feeling Nintendo will get most of the blame.

 

This is only a vague prediction. And this is why I think PewDiePie spoke up. A lot of channels that don't do indie games are at risk of hitting hard times, regardless if it's justified or not.

[Koh]

I'm not a fan of PewDiePie's channel myself (I can't say anything about him as a person though, I've never met or spoke with him), but I'm on Nintendo's side myself.

 

Everytime something cropped up about Nintendo doing something with their copyrighted content, I've always been on their side, because these people are literally getting paid just to play through their game and talk over it the whole video.  It'd be no different if someone did the same to a movie.  You're basically revealing all the contents in a product that people would otherwise have to pay to see.  Sure, games have an interaction layer that you just don't get by watching videos, but at the same time, especially for story-driven games, the story is a good portion of the game.  If you see all the cutscenes somewhere online (*cough*like I did with the Ace Attorney games*cough*), you don't have as much incentive to get the games as you did before.

 

This "free advertising" argument doesn't work for big time companies anyway.  They don't need some YouTuber to advertise their games; word gets around just from the fans alone, and their showcase streams.  That argument really only holds water for small indie projects, and those people are usually okay with it.

Edited by Koh, 01 February 2015 - 07:30 AM.

[Beefster]

Personally, I don't think gameplay videos should fall under the umbrella of copyright like this. Each playthrough is unique and is therefore a derivative work of sorts. Only the cutscenes would look the same, so really only cutscenes should be covered by copyright.

 

At least this is better than just taking down videos altogether, but if we can't see gameplay from SSB or Pokemon or other specific "approved" games... That just seems like a bad policy.

 

The only time that gameplay videos can really hurt a company is showcases of game-breaking bugs. Other than that, taking down the videos has no real benefit.

 

Copyright needs to change. This shouldn't be an issue.

[Eddard McHorn Van-Schnuder]

When it comes to the topic of let's plays and videos of gameplay, I don't think there's one single answer, it's not right and it's not wrong. I think it depends entirely on the game in question. Let's take The Walking Dead as an example. If you 'Let's play' The Walking Dead, the amount of work you as a content creator could possibly put into it lowers drastically, as The Walking Dead is very much a linear telling of a specific story (with tiny, tiny variations depending on the choices you as a player makes). I don't think developers should have to be too accepting of this kind of content.

 

But that's one very specific kind of game. Minecraft is a perfect example of a game in which video creators can actually put a whole lot of themselves into the content they're creating; it is highly unlikely that two videos will ever be the same, as long as you look away from the most basic of features that's included in the game (like, everybody is probably going to hit a tree at one point, but which tree, and what you do with the blocks afterwards, is completely your own choice). In general, I feel that more open ended experiences lend themselves much better to the kind of video content a Let's Play usually offers. Playing through The Walking Dead is not just the laziest thing you could possibly Let's Play, but I do truly believe that it could potentially have an effect on sales.

 

That said, there is no way we can prove that it would ever actually have any effect. Like, there's no way of knowing that a view on a Let's Play of The Walking Dead equals a lost sale on the part of the publisher. It's possible that it does, but it's impossible to prove, so saying that Let's Plays are bad for business is a bit misguided. What we can see however, is the jump in sales that a lot of games do get when someone well known on Youtube picks it up - that is directly trackable by numbers (and especially so in cases which the Youtuber has a discount code or a link to a storepage where you can buy the game, which means you can track different sales to different Youtubers). There should be no doubt in anybody's mind that Youtube video content can in fact increase sales and work as advertisement, it has been proven to work. While it sounds likely that it can go the other way as well, there's no way for us to actually verify that information. 

 

So what's the solution? I don't know, but it's not what Nintendo is doing. Personally I believe we need so see wide-scale changes to copyright laws, and we also need a shift in how we view video content on the internet in general. Right now we're living in a world that's outdated, and it's in dire need of instant patching. Nintendo may be going about this the wrong way, but they're certainly not alone in doing so.

[Koh]

I don't see what's so wrong about Nintendo's way here.  They could just pull the plug if they wanted, and take down anything that features their content.  But that's not what they're doing here...they're literally saying "Hey, we support you doing this, but since this features our content, we want a share of the profits too," which is the best possible way to handle it as a business.  They'll still get whatever little extra stragglers they didn't get with their AAA advertisement plans, and if not, they at least got some of the ad revenue from them taking a peek.

[Eddard McHorn Van-Schnuder]

I don't see what's so wrong about Nintendo's way here.  They could just pull the plug if they wanted, and take down anything that features their content.  But that's not what they're doing here...they're literally saying "Hey, we support you doing this, but since this features our content, we want a share of the profits too," which is the best possible way to handle it as a business.  They'll still get whatever little extra stragglers they didn't get with their AAA advertisement plans, and if not, they at least got some of the ad revenue from them taking a peek.

It's not really that simple. The deal Nintendo offers here is pretty bad, and that says something considering Nintendo has been one of the most aggressive companies when it comes to making copyright claims on videos and so on. Anyways, this affiliate program offers a deal in which Nintendo and the content creators (Let's Players, video critics and Youtubers using game footage in general) share the profits from the ad revenue earned by their videos. The thing is, Nintendo takes a significant share, one that on top of a lot of other problems that I will explain shortly, in a way makes it almost non-profitable to the ones actually creating these videos. And in a lot of cases we're talking about people who put a significant amount of work into their content, regardless of what you and I personally may think about Let's Plays.

 

Their deal states that the cut Nintendo will take is either 60% or 70%, for single videos or for entire channels respectively (you can apparently register both, though if you go with the channel it sounds like you can't ever post or mention anything about non-Nintendo products, but I'm not sure on that one). Nintendo will pay out using Paypal only, and in US Dollars. That's a problem because it means that on top of the big cut Nintendo are taking, the Youtubers then have to pay currency exchange rates depending on where they live, which might not sound like an issue but please remember that most Youtubers doesn't earn a lot of money on their videos. Any cut will hurt. Being a Youtuber, regardless of how ridiculous it may sound, has quickly become a serious profession, and these restrictions are actively working against it. It doesn't help that Nintendo makes sure to say that these percentages can be changed at any time without notice. Doesn't sound like good faith to me.

 

I don't believe this cut, or their deal in general is reasonable, especially considering that Google already takes a cut from every single video you make, and while their cut isn't small, it's still smaller than Nintendo's. I'm not sure what the number is though. Since they're using Paypal it means that Paypal will have its fees as well, and it sounds like Nintendo aren't going to be paying those. There are a lot of other cuts taken as well, though I'm not sure how all of this works as I'm not someone who makes Youtube videos for a living. 

 

And like I said earlier, there's not one shred of evidence that Youtube videos will take away from the number of sold copies, but there is evidence that they can, and have sold copies and worked as free advertisement. Anyways, I'm not sure if this was linked earlier or not, but TotalBiscuit explains this a lot better than I can, if you want to get a bit more in-depth of an explenation I reccomend watching the first topic he discusses in this video. It's the first 11 minutes or so:

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=t-67CvWTQ0I

[Fabbrizio]

In some cases this would be fair, but in the grand scheme of things, it really is neglecting a huge factor in the equation - the draw of the specific channel. In the case of pure gameplay footage, or even walkthrough videos, it's entirely fair. The draw is the game itself. But many Let's Players - at least among the monetized ones - make the hosting personality the primary draw. Markiplier, Game Grumps, Two Best Friends, Dodger, PBG, Super Beard Brothers, Achievement Hunter, Inside Gaming - it's all about the characters, the personalities, never about the game itself. When they play well-known or highly-regarded games it's primarily for their own sanity in the recording process, and has nothing to do with the draw to their channel. Notable exceptions include the Game Grumps of Sonic '06 and Markiplier's Five Nights at Freddy's, but in the former case I'm certain Sonic Team is fine not taking credit, and in the latter case Scott Cawthon has expressed consistent approval of monetized youtube videos.

The net result is that, in most cases that Nintendo would earn viable revenue for monetizing, Nintendo contributed very little to the actual entertainment value of the video. It would be almost comparable to the manufacturer of your production equipment demanding a cut of your profits. Almost.

That's just my $0.02.

Edited by Fabbrizio, 01 February 2015 - 04:14 PM.

[Beefster]

This kind of policy will also hurt charitable movements like AGDQ. If you can't have gameplay videos, you can't have a charity event dependent on them, and you therefore can't raise money for a good cause.

 

There really isn't any redeeming quality of fierce copyright protection.

[Koh]

I think people are totally sidestepping the fact that this really only affects those who are trying to make money by just playing through a Nintendo game.  If you aren't even monetizing your videos, and are just doing it for fun, which is what this whole shebang started as before monetization was invented, you'd be fine.  All Nintendo is saying is "If you're going to make money off of showing our product, the least you can do is give us a cut."  Big or small, at least they're working to have both, instead of just prohibiting them completely from being monetized.

 

People are calling Nintendo money-grubbing...but the opposers are the ones who are moneygrubbing, for wanting to keep all the money to theirself, even though their content in the video is well over 60% not theirs.