Want to make an LP of an Arcen title? Go right ahead!

[x4000]

Take screenshots, take video, monetize the video, put the LP that makes you money, whatever.  No issues with any of it, for any of our games!  You don't need to ask for our permission to talk about (in print or in video) our stuff.  Free speech FTW!

And when it comes to the monetization thing: heck, newpapers have always had advertizements while ALSO asking you to buy the print copy.  The subjects the papers were writing about didn't ever complain about this, I don't think.  (The second-order effects of sensationalism in the news and other ill effects when you're talking a business model about news as entertainment is very much a tangent and specific to news, I think.)

The obvious stuff about not claiming you made the game, or sharing ways to pirate or whatever, are all we ask you not do. 

Cheers!  And thanks for taking the time to want to talk about our stuff.

[Draco18s]

Kind of relevant here.

Youtube is apparently changing its policy regarding videos with gameplay footage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35P2-kVuHKI

Details seems scarce, but basically it looks like if you make a video review of some game, that video belongs to the published of that game and not to you and the publisher earns money from your work.

[x4000]

Well, we certainly won't be accepting any money from other folks' videos.  Hopefully YT sorts all that out what with the clamoring of people who hate these changes.

I guess I can understand that for people who are publishing videos of TV shows or whatever... I mean, those are at least like mediums.  But taking a video of playing a game?  Give me a break!

[Draco18s]

Well, we certainly won't be accepting any money from other folks' videos.  Hopefully YT sorts all that out what with the clamoring of people who hate these changes.

I guess I can understand that for people who are publishing videos of TV shows or whatever... I mean, those are at least like mediums.  But taking a video of playing a game?  Give me a break!

Just spreading the word.

And it appears that they're specifically targetting gameplay videos with this new change.

(Then I wonder: if someone makes a gameplay video of TerraFirmaCraft or BetterThanWolves...who gets the revenue?  Mojang because it's Minecraft, or the mod developer, because it's a total conversion and almost none of Minecraft's original content is left?  Including even large portions of the underlying codebase have been replaced wholesale.)

[x4000]

I guess maybe in that case Youtube keeps the money?

And yes, thanks for spreading the word -- it is good to have our position clarified in this post, anyway.  We also just today updated our Contact Us page to include a thing about this subject, too, because Josh had noticed it a few days ago also.  I forgot about this post, though, so great to have it here also.

[Volatar]

Youtube is literally shooting itself in the head here. All the top channels these days are professional Let's Play'ers and game reviewers. If they tell those people that they cannot make money off their work, well guess what? Those people will move somewhere where they can make a living, and the people who watch them will follow. And Youtube will not be able to get them back, no matter what they do.

They have time right now to reverse what they are doing. Once another site grabs the big names, it is all over.

[tigersfan]

Unfortunately, they are shooting themselves in the foot if they DON'T make these changes. Literally, it's only the fact that they are actively trying to keep copyrighted material off the site that is keeping them from a massive lawsuit from the big movie/music/games publishers. I know they are run by google, but, they don't want to deal with a combined lawsuit from Disney, Ninetendo, Sony, etc.

[x4000]

Movies, music -- fine.

But the only one doing much complaining about videos of games, to my knowledge, is Nintendo.  Sony and Microsoft actively are building LP capabilities into their hardware, for goodness sake.  And it's so popular on PC that I don't even think someone like EA particularly cares.  I guess that creators of story-driven games might care if that lets people get the story without playing the game... but I dunno.

Rather than a blanket policy, it seems like there should be some sort of "games are okay to LP unless their publisher/developer specifically puts it on a blacklist that people can easily refer to on youtube.  And in the case of blacklists, it simply takes down the content, doesn't provide a risk of lawsuits."  And reviews of anything should be protected under freaking fair use -- movies and so forth, too.

The whole thing seems ham-handed to me.

[Draco18s]

The funny thing is the policy change is only for video games.  It doesn't cover movies or music, just games.

Which means they are just shooting themselves if they make the change.

Sony and Microsoft actively are building LP capabilities into their hardware, for goodness sake.

Indeed.  Valve added a direct-to-youtube upload in TF2, what, two years ago?  Not only making it easier to create and edit the video content, but streamlining it so much all you needed to do was hit F8 and later hit "upload."  The cool part is that the video is actually generated server-side!  Well, the video data.  Rendering is still handled by the client.  You can, in fact, save replays and record from your killer's POV (or your victim, if you're actually good at the game unlike myself).

The whole thing seems ham-handed to me.

Should I expect a "Coke Classic" response now?

[x4000]

Haha, I hope they pull a Coke Classic.

[Aklyon]

The funny thing is the policy change is only for video games.  It doesn't cover movies or music, just games.

Which means they are just shooting themselves if they make the change.

They could've totally claimed it was entirely for copyright purposes if they decided to inflict this on everyone, but it seems they like to be a bit more selective if its not something obvious like continuing to degrade the front page/channel page design.

[Cyborg]

To a lesser extent, what about gamefaqs? Those are representations of complete games containing material people used to pay for, like cheat codes.


Also, I want to see the terms of service of any game that says you can't use it for a performance. Games are played all the time out in public. If you cannot show gameplay in public, you can't have handheld consoles anymore. I watched someone play some dungeon exploration game on a bus ride once. What's the difference between that and YouTube in the terms of service?


Also, does that mean you can copyright the use of a product in public? For example, if I'm selling some widget, can I prevent that widget from being shown on YouTube? Let's say that I make a wooden labyrinth with a marble in it and someone makes a video showing how to solve it. What's the difference?


What if you don't turn on advertisements?


So many questions, and I hope this goes to court so we can clear this up. I can understand that people who steal music and movies online, yeah that's piracy. But this is about performance, educating people how to play games, humor, and entertainment beyond the product itself. They are overstepping their bounds, and I really can't feel bad for any companies who have a "Let's Play" made about their game. I understand that Google is covering their behind, but I just don't see the liability here.

[x4000]

To be clear on my own stance, I'm entirely with you on all that, and feel that any disallowment of games on YouTube is ridiculous. However, my solution of a blacklist system was to give the... smart folks... who wish to block their content, a way to do so. One that clearly labels them as the jerks versus YouTube or "developers in general," and as a thing that helps provide a sense of security for LPers not working with the titles of those... smart folks.

Seriously. "I've written a book, but you can only read it if you never tell anyone about it." Sounds like a solid plan to me!

[Salamander]

A lot of this stems from terrible games getting panned by Youtubers and those game publishers crying copyright violations to get the videos taken down. It's the same ones that delete any negative feedback on their poor games on Steam forums. It's an unpleasant situation that some of these developers bring upon themselves for releasing games that are just poor quality and often badly broken.

I won't name the 2 games I'm especially thinking of, but I know at least one of them is well-known and disparaged universally.