Nintendo to stop revenue from Let's Plays

Link.

This. I was planning to get into Let's Playing 3DS and Vita games, along with any older PSP and older Nintendo handhelds I can find. This just discouraged me from doing games from one of the half of the handheld section. And how far does this go? Does it go all the way back to the NES games?

Well at least there just adding ads instead of outright taking down the videos...

edited 16th May '13 5:26:30 PM by lordnyx

Well most Let's Players don't usually get revenue from this, so I doubt this'll matter too much. The only people this really affects are people who actually get revenue from this, and those people can just LP other games, or go out and get a real job. I don't see why this is stopping you, unless you're just doing it for the money, in which case, you might want to reevaluate some things.

edited 16th May '13 5:30:41 PM by Marioguy128

Fully within Nintendo's legal rights, and technically what everyone should be doing. They could have made the move just a bit smarter to avoid the backlash, though, like putting up a big, neon sign on their site's homepage with a link to request permission to post their LPs without this.

Still, I find the backlash a bit stupid when none of the LPers this affects has even bothered to ask for permission. It'd be a different story if someone asked and they said no without a good reason, but as it stands, only people who contacted Nintendo are the press, to get a statement.

edited 16th May '13 5:33:28 PM by burnpsy

It's more of the spirit thing that annoys me. This is generating much more revenue for many games that it's supporting than just being something people take away money from. And what's to stop from taking off games from Youtube entirely?

I actually did watch a Let's Play of Thomas Was Alone before buying it as well. You can get so much info on how good a game is just by seeing someone react to it.

edited 16th May '13 5:37:08 PM by phoenixdaughterAM

What L Pers make a living off Let's Plays anyway? I don't know of that many.

Not that many. The number of LPers who do this shit for free vastly outnumber the ones who do this for money. It's a huge vocal minority here.

They're not taking down videos. It's just brand protection on their part. Fan made stuff such as animation and whatnot is completely unaffected. This just affects anything that uses their game footage. Though yes, from a PR point of view, this is rather unwise of Nintendo.

Tell me about it. This, plus I still remember the anger I felt at the Fire Emblem Awakening physical copies not being out at all during launch. It may be little things but I am noticing that I myself am favoring my Vita a lot more now.

edited 16th May '13 5:50:03 PM by phoenixdaughterAM

Far as I know it's only for vidoes longer than 10 minutes.

This is especially ironic since it was not that long ago that Nintendo approached The Runaway Guys into doing a special promotion video for them. I get the impression the higher-ups fell on their head.

x5: This is what companies do instead of taking down videos entirely. I personally can't see what the big deal is. They're not taking down the videos. They're not even seizing control of the videos themselves, just the ads. Personally I think that article is a bunch of sensationalistic yellow journalism, especially since I cannot fathom how this can be described as "legally pursuing" the fans.

And to my knowledge, ad revenue has never been a big deal with most LPers in the first place, plus I'm pretty sure using an LP to generate ad revenue was technically against the YouTube terms of service to begin with (if you place ads on a video you uploaded, it has to be 100% made by you and people who have given you explicit permission); they just don't really enforce it unless the creators of the game complain. (YouTube has asked me many times over the past couple years if I want to put ads on a couple of my Touhou replay videos. I've always clicked "Not Now" for the aforementioned reason. ZUN does explicitly give permission to distribute replays non-commercially, but I'm pretty sure ad revenue would count as commercial use and void the permission.)

Plus it's about a million times better than Sega sending out copyright takedowns for every video that had "Shining" and "Force" in its title (regardless of whether or not they even contained any Shining Force footage) back in November.

edited 16th May '13 6:21:04 PM by PoochyEXE

Uh no, You Tube themselves moved to make that possible. Their original partner program (which is how you get ad revenue) was not originally simple opt in, and you had to vetted by them for it. (Chuggaaconroy was the first to get in.) So they were perfectly okay with allowing people to make money off that kind of content, as long as no one staked a prior claim.

And there was a technicality that if you had commentary over a video, you could claim it as your own or something like that. Been awhile since I've read the rules.

Yeah, and I'm saying there was a disparity between the written terms and their actual actions. Written terms: The video has to be 100% created by you and people who have given you explicit permission to earn money from it. Actual practice: As long as nobody complains, you're OK.

Believe me, I was one of the ones approached for the partner program back in the day, for my Touhou replay videos. There was a bunch of rules you had to read and agree to before they would do the actual vetting (the first step was apparently an automated process that just finds videos and uploaders likely to be vetted and approaches them about it). I made it midway through the rules before deciding against it just to be safe, since ZUN only gives a non-commercial license.

edited 16th May '13 6:29:03 PM by PoochyEXE

A member of the Yogscast, Zoey Proasheck, lamented this, but said that this will not stop her from making L Ps, even though she will not be getting any money from it. While I know it could be worse, I still think its a dick move for Nintendo. EA doing something good and Nintendo doing a shady business thing? What Bizarro Universe have I stepped into!?

It's a win-win situation for most people involved. The videos that use Nintendo's IPs aren't taken down (not limited to Let's Plays), and Nintendo gets revenue for these fan works.

Only people who make money for actually LPing are losing, and those people are a precious few.

Yeah, and I acknowledged I'd do the same thing with games I really do like. It's just that I won't do so many of the games I'm just "eh" on.

But bad news for Nintendo is that for the 3DS, so far only Fire Emblem Awakening has hit that point.

The thing is, if they are making money, they are likely very popular. If this causes them to stop, less Nintendo exposure or something. Not a business guy but I know something is bad.

edited 16th May '13 6:53:31 PM by Ninjaxenomorph

I don't see why they can't play something other than Nintendo games.

edited 16th May '13 7:05:27 PM by PhysicalStamina

Play, you mean?

They will. Mostly this is going to lead to less Nintendo L Ps, even if its only from successful youtubers.

Well, I have no idea who would want to LP any game, Nintendo or not, as a career path. Only the cream of the crop of LPers are made YouTube partners, while the 99% are largely ignored and Retsupurae'd if they're "lucky."

You'd be surprised how many people use these videos as a source of income.

I know that there's Chuggaaconroy, the other two Runaway Guys, maybe Tobuscus and Pew Die Pie, but I think that's it.

In fact, one of my favorites, ClementJ642, doesn't make any money, yet he's a very prolific and fun LPer nonetheless.

All of the Yogscast, and pretty much every associate that appeared in one of their videos NOT working for a video game company.

edited 16th May '13 7:27:51 PM by Ninjaxenomorph