Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/nintendo-takes-legal-action-against-its-own-community-claims-rights-over-yo

by c-oreills • 13 years ago

37 53 13 years ago

penny-arcade.com

ttt_• 13 years ago

On one side there is huge incentive to be social on the web, which paramounts to sharing stuff with others.

On the other side, no one will let you share their content.

If the world were a person, he would be right on track for schizophrenia.

adamors• 13 years ago

It's not entirely Nintentdo's content though, is it?

J_Darnley• 13 years ago

No, I believe most of these "Lets Play" videos contain commentary voice-overs by the players, but neither they nor Google care about this with the Content ID system.

stonemetal• 13 years ago

Nintendo is allowing sharing just not profiting.

witek3• 13 years ago

Good point. So Nintendo would be getting a cut not take the whole amount?

belorn2• 13 years ago

How can Nintendo claim ownership of the videos? I can see how they might claim ownership of the images and in-game sounds, but the commentary and actions made by the player is the ownership of the player.

Taking control of content which they only have partial legal right to is still very much illegal and copyright infringement. They are basically knowingly committing commercial piracy, including sending knowingly false take down notices (if they claim complete ownership). In times like that, the authors of said videos has a good chance to sue for damages.

raganwald• 13 years ago

"Claim ownership of" is within the context of YouTube's ecosystem and YouTube's TOS. As a YouTube partner, they have the right to monetize videos that YouTube agrees they "own," block them, &c.

I don't think that asserting ownership within YouTube is equivalent to asserting legal ownership of all of the IP involved. For example, I can't see them rebroadcasting any of these videos in another medium.

belorn2• 13 years ago

Can the actually author of the video take down the videos (ie take control of the copyright)?

DanBC3• 13 years ago

It's a stupid move by Nintendo.

Some people view Let's Plays before buying a game. People aren't going to go to the trouble of recording Let's Plays without getting any kind of ad revenue from it. So people aren't going to bother recording Nintendo games anymore.

And they can just delete all the Nintendo videos they already have up. So now Nintendo doesn't have anyone promoting their games (for free to Nintendo) and isn't getting any of the very small amounts of ad revenue and is competing against a bunch of other games that do have Let's Plays up online.

fhd22• 13 years ago

> It's a stupid move by Nintendo.

Definitely not nice, but stupid? I'm not sure about that. I have some doubts that Nintendo (being usually very good at not making their community angry IIRC) would do this without reason. Can we rule out that they actually noticed declining sales of some titles as Let's Play videos about them popped up?

I can't imagine they wanted a PA article on this though.

mistercow3• 13 years ago

>Can we rule out that they actually noticed declining sales of some titles as Let's Play videos about them popped up?

Let's run with that reasoning for a minute. That means that they did a study and found not only that the Let's Plays were costing them sales, but also that the lost revenue was small enough that it would be more profitable to keep the videos up and intercept the ad revenue, than to have them taken down entirely.

What that means is that the effect size they observed must have been tiny. As a consequence, to have observed a statistically significant correlation, they would have needed an extremely large sample size. Keep in mind that these are some very noisy variables they are supposed to have measured.

So in conclusion, yes I think we can rule that possibility out. Or at least, if they did notice declining sales, they were irrational for thinking that was sufficient evidence to take this action.

jakerocheleau3• 13 years ago

This was such a solid analysis through-and-through. I feel that so many companies are getting real antsy and feel the need to grab for complete 100% ownership over all creative rights for everything with no leeway whatsoever. We, the people who actually pay for & consume these games, have no right to redesign or modify or record or promote anything without their consent - which would probably be denied most of the time anyways. From my point of view, it's just very difficult to continue supporting the video game industry anymore.

criley• 13 years ago

>From my point of view, it's just very difficult to continue supporting the video game industry anymore.

Don't judge an industry by it's rotting old guard. Nintendo has been making blunder after blunder for quite some time and does not represent gaming as a whole.

Reddit has helped built a list[1] of studios and publishers who have given permissions for LPers to make videos, and the list is pretty comprehensive. Tons of developers and companies are 100% okay with and even promote it.

Also, with both next gen consoles supporting game play video natively, it's going to get bigger and bigger in the industry.

http://letsplaylist.wikia.com/wiki/%22Let%27s_Play%22-friend...

skymt2• 13 years ago

People recorded Let's Plays as a hobby for years before a few worked out that it might be a business. This isn't going to stop anyone but the few who thought it would be a good idea to make their living playing video games for the Internet.

thenomad• 13 years ago

Who also happen to be the people putting the most time and effort into producing entertaining, watchable Let's Plays, and generally are the people who have the biggest audience.

I've seen the chilling effects of this sort of thing before, in the Machinima world, and you'd be amazed how much damage removing or limiting the top creators in the chain can do.

_pmf_• 13 years ago

> Some people view Let's Plays before buying a game.

Maybe the reasoning is that this is not very beneficial to Nintendo, since most of their games are visually at most a "Meh".

freehunter3• 13 years ago

Really? I've always held that the common thought was that Nintendo games are very stylistic and artfully designed. I hear people talk for days about how beautiful the new Zelda game is or how artistically styled the new Mario game is. They might not pump out the most pixels, but they can designed around their limitations.

DanBC3• 13 years ago

...but that's even more reason to view someone actually playing the game rather than just looking at screenshots.

emehrkay• 13 years ago

> Some people view Let's Plays before buying a game

I can't tell you how many times my son has come to me and asked for a new game because of some YouTube videos that he has been watching

Edit: as a matter of fact, he wanted to play the WiiU not too long ago after watching NintendoLand playthroughs of the Zelda game. The WiiU that hasn't been turned on in MONTHS

tlarkworthy2• 13 years ago

Presumably Youtube asked the same question to Nintendo that Youtube did to Mojang, do you want to monetize your trademarks? Mojang declined earning off Minecraft's massive youtube impact[1], Nintendo wanted the cash.

And so we can clearly see Nintendo has lost its way and Minecraft is the the new Nintendo.

[1] https://twitter.com/notch/status/335045859156819969

antidaily• 13 years ago

This is key, I think. YouTube probably came to Nintendo. Like, sales guys. "Hey, here's 8 figures you could be pocketing".

shawabawa3• 13 years ago

Why would youtube do that though? They get their cut whether it goes to nintendo or the channel owner, and in fact it makes a lot more sense for them to keep the money going to the channel to incentivise them to make more videos

tomrod• 13 years ago

I certainly agree Mojang has done some cool stuff, but they'll need to step up their game significantly if they're going to be "the next Nintendo".

arkitaip• 13 years ago

Christ, how deep in trouble is Nintendo if they are going after youtubers' - i.e. their marketing partners - money? I mean, what kind of revenue are we talking here, a couple of millions?

witek3• 13 years ago

Yeah, nuts. Also, did nobody there work out how much they would have to PAY for this much coverage?

specto• 13 years ago

I understand that some people view this as a bad thing, but if you want Nintendo to keep making games and consoles, some revenue would do them good.

sillysaurus2• 13 years ago

Ad revenue won't help them if they die as a videogame company. This is a long-term strategic mistake.

mistercow3• 13 years ago

I don't even know that it's that long-term of a mistake. We can expect professional quality Let's Plays for Nintendo games to die off almost instantly (since it's no longer a profession if Nintendo takes all the revenue), and for the people who do them to switch to non-Nintendo games.

In other words, they aren't even going to make very much money off of this in the short term, and they're driving the free advertising to their competition.

wavefunction• 13 years ago

I don't think YouTube ad revenues are going to keep Nintendo from circling the drain. Seems like classic corporate overreach and shooting themselves in the foot.

ianstallings• 13 years ago

Good news, I want no such thing.

DanBC3• 13 years ago

I would much rather Nintendo monetise things they've made.

Someone posted this link here the other day. It's a good game. Nintendo could easily sell this on various platforms and app-stores.

(http://www.pokemon.jp/#/contents/enjoy/play_pass/2.html)

sillysaurus2• 13 years ago

A good analogy is buying a car. If I buy a car and make a video at the beach that happens to include the car, what right does the car manufacturer have to say, "The video incorporates my IP, so therefore we're going to force you to show ads for our car"?

You could argue that videogames are somehow different. But they're not. If someone makes a video about having fun with their friends, then the game they're doing it in is almost incidental. For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD5J5LEBVCk

Videos such as that one take a lot of work to make. It takes many hours to record the content, many hours to edit it, and a way to promote it once it's made. The game maker probably doesn't deserve any slice of revenue generated from that. The game is incidental.

bvdbijl• 13 years ago

I wouldn't really call that a great analogy, a better analogy would be if you record a video of you showing the insides of the car and going on a trip where you describe how the car drives. But still, dumb dumb move by Nintendo

lomegor• 13 years ago

All these articles are assuming Nintendo will get the whole profits from the videos, but I'm not seeing that in any sources. Does any one have more info on that? As far as I understand it, Nintendo will only get a cut from the profits, YouTube another cut, and the rest will go to the creator of the video. Not that it makes the move much better, but I think it's important to note if people can still make money from Nintendo Let's Plays.

The other thing I would like to know if anyone has more info, is if this in fact, affects Let's Plays. Maybe they were only going after machinima, or videos that show trailers or cutscenes. Is there any source where I can read more of that? I think this could be the crux of the issue: if they aren't trying to get money from Let's Plays, the move isn't so bad. EDIT: NVM, read the original source and they are claiming LP videos... that's sad, really.

What I find weird about this whole thing is that neither Nintendo or YouTube have issued an explanation of how things are going to work, and why they think the move is a good one. With all the backslash that this has created in the last week, I would think those companies would like to offer their side of the argument.

xanadohnt• 13 years ago

You're killing free advertising, Nintendo. Good move.

rusbra• 13 years ago

Nintendo taking after Sony.

zamalek• 13 years ago

Quick question for the legally-knowledgeable here (I am not an LPer and won't act on the knowledge, just want to know if what I know about the law is right).

As far as I know when you use any recorded human product (voice, movement, etc.) you need a signed "release form" from the people involved in that - else you stand to be sued for damages (due to rights violation, nothing to do with copyright, although I guess the LPers could have a case there as well). Music artists, for example, need to sign one of these release forms to give their publisher the rights to their voice.

Considering that the LPs are 50/50 Nintendo/LPer couldn't the LPer's [in theory] lash back and demand royalties because Nintendo illegally become their publisher without acquiring release forms (the YouTube EULA is between the LPer and YT, not the LPer and Nintendo)? Or indeed demand damages that far exceed any form of profit they have lost from the adverts in the first place (rights violation)? Or am I completely wrong?

Nintendo grabs money, control from fans promoting its games on Youtube

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