Nintendo to Start Collecting Ad Revenue on "Let's Play" Videos Using Its Content

From IGN:

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Nintendo has started claiming ad revenue on user-created Youtube videos featuring its games, according to reports from Youtube users.
Nintendo does not want to block videos containing content that it owns from appearing on Youtube (as many film and music publishers have), but it wants to place ads at the beginning and the end of videos featuring Nintendo games, such as Let's Plays, with that revenue going to Nintendo as opposed to the creator of the video.

Prolific Youtube channel owner Zack Scott has posted on Facebook about the demands. "I think filing claims against LPers is backwards," he writes. "Video games aren't like movies or TV. Each play-through is a unique audiovisual experience. When I see a film that someone else is also watching, I don't need to see it again. When I see a game that someone else is playing, I want to play that game for myself! Sure, there may be some people who watch games rather than play them, but are those people even gamers?"

Nintendo has issued the following statement to GameFront on the matter: "As part of our on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media channels in an appropriate and safe way, we became a Youtube partner and as such in February 2013 we registered our copyright content in the Youtube database.“

"For most fan videos this will not result in any changes, however, for those videos featuring Nintendo-owned content, such as images or audio of a certain length, adverts will now appear at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips. We continually want our fans to enjoy sharing Nintendo content on Youtube, and that is why, unlike other entertainment companies, we have chosen not to block people using our intellectual property."

Nintendo's right to protect its copyright is enshrined both in law and in Youtube's copyright guidelines, which state that just because you purchase something, it doesn't mean that you have the right to upload it. But this sets an uncomfortable precedent for Youtubers who make their living from Let's Plays and other self-created game content: they are now unlikely to feature Nintendo games, and if other publishers were to follow suit it would be a monumental shake-up.

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I like the veiled jab at Sega, but in typical Nintendo style, it's late. Sega no longer blocks people posting content of Shining games.

Melf, Melf, Melf, you have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat me to bad Nintendo press. I commend the dedicated thread though. Everyone would have lost their shit if I did it.

Click for full size

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

Melf, Melf, Melf, you have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat me to bad Nintendo press. I commend the dedicated thread though. Everyone would have lost their shit if I did it.

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I checked a few pages back and didn't see a thread, so I figured I got the scoop, lol. I was going to check the 3DS thread but decided against it. Didn't think to consider the WiiU thread, though. But then, who ever thinks of the WiiU? :p

I particularly like this sentence: "As part of our on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media channels in an appropriate and safe way, we became a Youtube partner and as such in February 2013 we registered our copyright content in the Youtube database."

Translated from bullshit corporate speak to reality: "As part of our on-going push to get any kind of content we could on the Wii U, we became a Youtube partner and took the opportunity to once again screw over our brainwashed fans."

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Originally Posted by Melf

But then, who ever thinks of the WiiU? :p

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One poster comes to mind.

<3 <3 <3

Lame. What happened to fair use?

They can still use it allllll they want.

They just can't point a camera at a Nintendo game and make some pennies anymore.

Yeah fair use doesn't work when you can't afford the lawsuits to prove you were right

There's a ton of thing that irritate me about Nintendo, but this is not one of them.

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Originally Posted by Mzo

They can still use it allllll they want.

They just can't point a camera at a Nintendo game and make some pennies anymore.

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Except that this isn't limited to videos that had ads before. People who were just Nintendo fans and weren't making a dime now can get ads slapped on their already free advertising.

Don't all Youtube videos have ads anyway? I know they don't play every time, but i thought ads were just a Youtube thing, not something you could choose whether or not to use.

I put an ad on a video of my cat jumping from the kitchen counter to the top of the fridge because fuck you pay me.


I've gotten like $20 from it.

Ok, so that's a baseline to start from. Now the trick is to take how long it took to generate that $20 and film enough cat videos so that it generates a living wage, assuming you're living on the top floor of a New York City high rise. You might want to get another cat or two to maximize the cuteness output.

James

Hm... You may be on to something. I baited this with Nintendo, Kirby and Lets Play tags. Lets see if I get ads slapped onto it.

Doen't Microsoft do the same with Halo 4 videos? Which isn't to excuse Nintendo for being monstrously short-sighted, just to note that they're not the only idiots around.

eh at least they didn't go full retard like viacom and attempt to pull EVERYTHING, including content that isn't even theirs, off youtube


a friend of mine had some RE videos pulled down by viacom and they pretty much have nothing to do with that game

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Originally Posted by James

Ok, so that's a baseline to start from. Now the trick is to take how long it took to generate that $20 and film enough cat videos so that it generates a living wage, assuming you're living on the top floor of a New York City high rise. You might want to get another cat or two to maximize the cuteness output.

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The bigger videogame channels do make more than enough to live off of (maybe not enough to live in a penthouse in Manhattan... but still).

Don't like it. If people are generating content, they should get paid for it. If someone's gone to the trouble to build a following (based on charisma/presentation/whatever), Nintendo is basically swiping their revenue here without adding any value.

Is playing a game the same as uploading a TV show?

I doubt they'll differentiate based on levels of production, but I absolutely think some of these continuous Let's Play videos are pretty garbage.

A scripted and edited game critique or strategy video is a different story.

Again, this is through my eyes. Nintendo just wants them pennies rolling in.

Most lets play videos make me want to kill myself. Don't talk over the game you pretentious twat, if you absolutely need to, use annotations.

Let 'em live or die based on their own merits. I know that if I find a narrator/series I like one video from, I'm more likely to watch more from that poster instead of doing a search for some rando one.

i like that Cry fellow playing scary games that i wouldn't be playing anyway. He's pretty entertaining

Some guy at my old job used to be obsessed with the LP videos, and would show me some occasionally. There were some funny dudes sometimes. I would watch them if I knew which ones they were in. I think they did one where they LP'd an LP some obnoxious girl did of Eternal Darkness...

I had to play Deadly Premonition that way since the game was so god damn awful. I watched maybe 20 hr of content.

I don't even have time to play my own games, much less watch someone play them on Youtube. Nintendo is still being assholes about this.

This comes off as petty. If these videos were really making a significant amount of money, I could actually understand it, but they're really not. Most of them were being offered for free. The more popular ones could be making a user maybe $20 a month or something. It isn't worth the bad press.

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Originally Posted by YellerDog

Let 'em live or die based on their own merits. I know that if I find a narrator/series I like one video from, I'm more likely to watch more from that poster instead of doing a search for some rando one.

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The way Youtube handles things, in regards to how it figures out which videos are infringing on what, is to compare audio and video tracks. The best way for folks to avoid this is to turn the music down and provide more commentary and just skip cut scenes. The folks who are going to be effected by this are the ones who are just throwing up hour long straight lets plays with barely any commentary and basically just straight here's the game.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

This comes off as petty. If these videos were really making a significant amount of money, I could actually understand it, but they're really not. Most of them were being offered for free. The more popular ones could be making a user maybe $20 a month or something. It isn't worth the bad press.

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God forbid anyone but Nintendo profit from their IP. Contrast this with Valve:

http://www.valvesoftware.com/videopolicy.html




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU

Summary:

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They found that in multiplayer games, players can make better and more valuable content than Valve themselves. So Valve is continually making new ways for these people to monetize their creations and get money from Valve. Some guy made $500k making TF2 hats. Also, they made an interesting way to pay pro Dota 2 teams to play; spectators can buy virtual banners and get a virtual item/reward at the end if their chosen team wins, and said team gets a portion of these banner sales. So a Gabe said a player like Dendi is expected to make around $100k a year just from this - this helps drive player-driven entertainment.

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OPA DENDI

Meanwhile, this is how the makers of the best game of 2012 act:
Attachment 70177

That's awesome.

Makers of the best game of 2012?

It was a pretty weak year. My pick would be Borderlands 2, and even that's not that good.

Crusader Kings II is GOTY 2012. No contest. You all should play it.

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Originally Posted by The Gas

It was a pretty weak year.

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For the Wonderswan, sure. There was a ton of great stuff for the modern systems.

Paradox made Max Payne 3? Wow, what a huge budget for a small studio

never going to play that, it is probably broken in 50 ways if bvork likes it

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Originally Posted by Valve

We encourage our users to make videos using Valve game content, such as playthrough or instruction videos or SFM movies. We are fine with publishing these videos to your website or YouTube or similar video sharing services. We're not fine with taking assets from our games (e.g. voice, music, items) and distributing those separately.

You are free to monetize your videos via the YouTube partner program and similar programs on other video sharing sites. Please don't ask us to write YouTube and tell them its fine with us to post a particular video using Valve content. It's not possible to respond to each such request. Point them to this page.

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Great policy. Valve > Nintendo. Is Nintendo's ploy a quick cash grab after the relatively disappointing sales of Wii U?

I've had a "matched third party content" autoflag notification on my Rolling Thunder 2 arcade no-miss play @ Youtube, but Namco hasn't seemed to really give even 1/10 of a damn. This is all gameplay, with no commentary track or other bullshit. I'm with Chux on not talking over the game, and reserve the right to annotate occasionally. While I have found several LPs to be entertaining, there are some that give me more of a "Shut! UP!" vibe.

heh, I'm high on the leaderboard for copyright violations

A copyright claim for ads will disable your vid from """mobile""" which is iOS, Android, WP, and topbox streamers. My google analytics tells me about 40% of viewers try to watch my vids on "mobile"

A copyright flag is just Google's Content ID system automatically identifying something (like the audio-visual equivalent to Shazam & Soundhound) and using the stock response from the company it's violating. You can dispute these claims and submit some stock legal-sounding bullshit about the fair use act. This gives the company a month for a human to actually look at its own claim. Some companies will accept this and back off; others won't. None of the companies I've disputed against let the verification deadline expire. The companies who have replied to my dispute immediately all rejected my bullshit claims. The people who waited a few weeks to review my claim accepted my claim.

About 60% of my videos were disabled or muted from Content ID claims 2009-2011. The scene has relaxed a lot nowadays, and now about 2% of my vids are currently disabled from claims, adding ads and banning me from a few countries instead. Most of my vids are banned in Germany for some reason.

The general rule is don't fuck with Viacom unless you're gonna desync audio, reverse the image, and run other distortion shenanigans to battle Content ID identification. The new thing to reconsider remixing is the small youtube-only viral sensations like Autotune the News, Epic Rap Battles of History, etc.; anyone just big enough to set up their own Content ID operations. Their bannings are harsher and worldwide. However, I have been able to dispute all claims from small time youtube sensations and win.

Nintendo needs money from wherever it can get it. It sure as shit isn't from the WiiU.

Talk about bad PR.