Youtube Redirects Ad Revenue for Let's Plays

I really need to wonder how much data the site has on it if you were to compile it all together.

Personally, I give zero shits about Pew Die Pie. I don't watch him, I don't care to watch him. What I'm concerned about is how this is going to fuck over pretty much everyone.

*Cough* Rape Jokes *cough*

Anyhow, why this won't kill Let's Play, it's going to moderately screw over the big names that do this for a living. I don't know what the ratio of Rooster Teeth's income is from ads vs merchandise, their first party stuff, and money from sponsors, but I feel, at least as far as Achievement Hunter goes, it's strongly leaning towards the former.

Granted, they're such a big name that they can probably cut deals with IP holders to share ad revenues, but that's still probably a 20%+ decrease in revenue given that bigger companies can and will just strong-arm them into extremely one way splits like 70-30 or 80-20, and this will absolutely destroy mid sized channels who either make a living off ad revenue or use it to give themselves the time they need to do their videos.

edited 11th Dec '13 6:22:33 AM by Archereon

According to people who know more about him than I do, after people made a fuss about it he immediately stopped and made a video apologizing. He may not be the best guy ever, but he isn't as bad as a lot of people make him out to be.

Looks like most of the shut-downs have nothing to do with the actual companies of the game at all. Just random GIFT-abusers flagging the vids and getting them taken down with the knowledge that You Tube probably won't look into most of the claims of false-flagging.

Resposting a post I made on the main You Tube thread, as it seems more relevant here:

About Let's Play and add revenue, this video, from popular let's player Total Biscuit, lay some good argument in favor for the practice. (Note: this video is related to a separated incident, but it is still relevant here)

Personally, I think it vary case by case. I can easily understand the argument against let's play of story driven games. I actually know people who prefer to watch a let's play of, say, Final Fantasy than to actually play it. If the story is the key aspect for why people play these games, a Let's Play will likely hurt almost as much as actual piracy^note there is argument piracy don't actually hurt sales, and so neither would let's plays, but that is discussion for another time.

However, games mostly driven by gameplay itself are another story. The key enjoyment of these games is actually playing them. You can't archive that by watching other players. Let's Play don't really "compete" with buying the game because the kind of enjoyment is ultimately different. In those cases, let's play is essentially free marketing. I know at last two developers who acknowledge that and actively ask for let's players to play their games^note Paradox Developers and Blizard, if you are wondering, with Europa Universalis and Hearthstones.

In other words, the issue is much more complex than just "Let's players using content they don't own for profit". For starter, they not only actually own their commentary but also the gameplay. How much the gameplay is valuable probably vary from game to game, but it is not the same thing as someone streaming a whole movie while commenting about it. And, of course, let's play most certainly benefit multiple game companies, even if they are not aware of it, so it wouldn't be of their best interest to crack down on the practice.

edited 11th Dec '13 7:50:29 AM by Heatth

I'm not sure about this argument. I don't watch much Let's Play videos, but none of those I watched ever convinced me not to buy it (most of the time, it was for video games I didn't plan to buy in the first place, and often didn't have the platform for, such as Final Fantasy XIII, Platform Hell games, or Cave Story+Eversion).

...Or games I already had, such as Iji and Portal2.

edited 11th Dec '13 8:11:33 AM by Medinoc

Well, in such cases you wouldn't buy the game anyway, right? You either already had the game or you didn't even had the platform, isn't it? Then the Let's Play did not hurt the companies in any way, so what is the harm?

Personally, I have been persuaded to buy games thanks to LP. Starbound being the most obvious and recent example. Given I don't care for neither Minecraft nor Terraria, I wouldn't even think about Starbound normally. However, I watched a couple of LP and thought it seemed fun, so now I plan on buying it. It is also relevant I only watched these LP because a couple of "professional" LP I happen to follow played them.

And conversely, LPs have convinced me to purchase games I otherwise wouldn't have - for that matter, I haven't even played Alan Wake or Alice Madness Returns yet due to hardware issues but I bought them anyway.

edited 11th Dec '13 8:23:45 AM by Noaqiyeum

The thing is, this move could not have come at a worse time for Youtube (with the recent release of the Playstation 4, which has built-in software to handle recording and upload of gameplay footage). It probably doesn't help that the Updated Re-release of Age of Empires II also has something similar (but exclusively for Twitch).

I suspect that the upcoming Steam Machines will probably include something in the same vein, as Valve is fairly laid back about rights issues. The bottom line is that cracking down on LPs now, when the majority of the industry is embracing them, is not going to end well.

No, yeah, a fair number of games now embrace in-game recording and even let you upload to You Tube. Hell, I heard that Minecraft just got an update to support streaming directly to Twitch or whichever.

That is why Mojang is awesome. But that's another story.

Anyway, isn't the amount of people who just watch You Tube and the amount of people who watch Let's Plays insanely close or something? If it is, this is gonna bite You Tube is the butt.

edited 11th Dec '13 2:29:49 PM by DiscoDancer

Loosk like the publishers aren't any happier about this. Ubisoft, Blizzard, and Capcom have all put out releases telling Let's Players to contact them directly if their work gets hit by a notice from "them". Ubisoft especially urges this, because they actually allow people to make money on Let's Plays of their games.

Glad to see them stepping up. All those companies get some points from me for that.

Good on Capcom, whatever branch that may be.

Nintendo, buddy ol' pal of mine, quit acting stupid before my childhood is ruined.

-facepalm- I take that back. Nintendo, I apologize for being illiterate.

What legal case is Youtube losing that prompted this response? This doesn't benefit Google in any way so why else would they do it if not due to third party pressure?

Paradox Interactive went so far as to have their legal team draw a letter giving the okay.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?671169-Monetizing-from-Youtube-videos-containing-Paradox-Interactive-material

Still not going to stop the takedowns, given that they are mostly automated. But its nice to devs coming out against this.

Adam Sessler, TotalBiscuit, and a handful of other people talk about this.

You would think with all the money and resources google has, they could hire a room full of interns to just scan this shit.

In the middle there they kinda veered towards just talking about the benefits of Let's Plays in general, and at the end talked about why companies should be allowing this stuff, but the start was nice on the actual youtube content match bot is just a bot targeting stuff, even the stuff that companies are not making claims for.

Angry Joe lays in his thoughts...