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

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

#21

Post by shawabawa3 »

antidaily wrote: post #14
tlarkworthy wrote: post #12

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

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

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

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

#22

Post by mistercow »

fhd2 wrote: post #16
DanBC wrote: post #10

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…

> 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.

>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.

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

#23

Post by thenomad »

skymt wrote: post #19
DanBC wrote: post #10

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…

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.

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.

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

#24

Post by skymt »

DanHulton wrote: post #7
freehunter wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a copyright lawyer, but that sounds like an unauthorized derivative work. For fair use to apply, the work has to be transformative, changing the original work in a substantial way. Since I'm not a lawyer I don't know if recording your own voice over the video would be considered significantly transformative or not.

IANAL either, but I'd say it's pretty transformative. It goes from binary code and assets you can interact with to a video with commentary. Song mashups already go from songs to similar-sounding songs and those are fine. Again, IANAL, but if mashups are okay, it makes sense to me that Let's Play videos should fall under the same - if not more generous - rules.

But legally mashups aren't okay. Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films was a sucessful suit over a two-second sample. The court decided that unlicensed use of even this brief riff was infringement. Mashups are tolerated because of their place in musical culture, but if a copyright owner decided to sue they'd have an easy case. (Though maybe not from a PR perspective.) (I'm also not a lawyer.)

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

#26

Post by sillysaurus »

specto wrote: post #25

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.

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

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

#27

Post by wavefunction »

specto wrote: post #25

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.

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.

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

#28

Post by witek »

arkitaip wrote: post #13

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?

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

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

#29

Post by sillysaurus »

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.

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

#30

Post by witek »

stonemetal wrote: post #6
ttt_ wrote: post #2

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.

Nintendo is allowing sharing just not profiting.

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