Nintendo Nixes Live Streams For Its Own Creators Program For Some Reason
from the nintendon't dept
In 2014, following nearly a full year of waging an intellectual property war on YouTubers doing "let's play" videos with its games, Nintendo unleashed upon the world what would eventually become its "Creators Program". Through the program, YouTubers would be allowed to put videos including Nintendo IP on their channels in exchange for revenue sharing between the creator and Nintendo itself. For a company like Nintendo, which had built a reputation for exerting strict control in this arena, it felt like a huge step forward. It took only a few months before the whole thing began devolving into a bureaucratic mess, with: language in the affiliate agreement clearly geared towards garnering positive coverage from YouTubers; a mishandling of the influx of interest in the program by creators themselves; and a strange whitelist and blacklist of what games could be covered, which hurt channels with extensive back catalogs of content that might need to be deleted. Some high profile YouTubers swore off covering Nintendo games in revolt, while everyone else was left wondering why this had to be handled so badly.
It doesn't seem to be getting any better. For some reason, in the past few days, Nintendo suddenly nixed live-streams from channels affiliated with the Creators Program.
As of today, YouTubers who are also registered members of the Nintendo Creators Program are no longer allowed to broadcast content on YouTube Live. Nintendo gives partners two options: they can broadcast content on YouTube Live from a channel that isn't registered to the program, or they can cancel their channel's registration to the program, and instead register their videos to the program separately. The changes were announced in an email sent to content creators yesterday evening, although Nintendo didn't officially publish the changes to the program until today.
Some Twitter users have posted the contents of the email, which announces that changes have been made as to how the Nintendo Creators Program will handle revenue generated from live streams. It adds that live streaming falls “outside the scope” of the program.
If that sounds like a confusing mess to you, you aren't alone. YouTubers themselves, who actually have to navigate these waters as professionals, have expressed reactions ranging from outrage to disappointment to downright confusion. Some are calling the move stupid. Others are pointing out that any random person not in the Creators Program is able to live-stream Nintendo games, yet officially sanctioned creators cannot. Most reactions amount to pointing out that this doesn't make any sense. Even those covering the story, such as Kotaku, seem to be at a complete loss.
It's uncertain as to why Nintendo introduced this policy. It's also unclear if Nintendo has similar rules for those live streaming Nintendo-copyrighted content on other sites such as Twitch. Representatives for Nintendo did not respond by press time.
When the two chief reactions to a policy shift from those affected by it amount to anger and confusion as to why the shift was even necessary, that's not a good look. With Nintendo staring blankly at requests for clarification from the press, both YouTubers and the public are left to speculate as they please. Though it seems most are content to rage at Nintendo for this decision.
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Filed Under: let's play, permission, video games, video streams
Companies: nintendo
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~Nintendo
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Lost all interest or respect in them years ago.
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Re:
Now to go find a way to use DRM-stripped games on the Switch...
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Fair use
Learn it, love it. No apologies.
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Re: Fair use
In the world of Copyright Maximists, there is no such thing as "fair use". All that exists is:
If these people could, they'd withdraw money from your bank account on a whim just because they felt the fancy to do so. They literally think that they (and their descendants) should be paid in perpetuity for creating ONE work. (Regardless as to the number of works they actually create, they want to be paid for each individual work in perpetuity.) Never mind that doing so would utterly destroy any resource based economy, due to the inherent unworkable nature of their demands VS. the fundamental design of the underlying economy.
These people are sociopaths. Willing to upend society for nothing more than their own unsatisfiable lust for money. Their works, in my opinion, are tainted by their greed. What should bring people happiness and joy, is replaced by anger and hatred.
What Nintendo is doing here is no different from this description. They are trying as hard as they can to squeeze every last penny out of their IP, to both society's detriment, and theirs. That may be their "right" to do so, but I think that this should be the death nail for any Nintendo related content on YouTube or any other video streaming site that's not financed by Nintendo directly. They want to poison the well of free promotion or criticism, then they can be the ones to drink from it.
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Re: Re: Fair use
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"Nintendo" did this, "Nintendo" did that.
I think it's high time we stopped blaming companies and speculating on their nebulous evil reasons, and started pointing the finger at actual people and see what their rationalisations are.
And if these people, the legal team or marketing team or whoever, don't want to step up, don't want their name attached to the decisions they make, and prefer to hide behind a company, then that tells us everything we need to know about the ethics and good faith (or lack of it) behind their choices.
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Re: "Nintendo" did this, "Nintendo" did that.
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Re: Re: "Nintendo" did this, "Nintendo" did that.
If it's a snarky question, I'd assume it's because customer service representatives get individual responsibility without individual profit.
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Stopped
Can't say that I feel sorry for the rest of the folks getting "Nintendo'd" like this.
If you keep giving these places your money, they have no reason to change do they?
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Re: Stopped
The counter-argument to this of course is one word, 'Nintendo', so take that as you will.
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To record a simple statement explaining that Nintendo has gone insane.
Nintendo has been waging a war against their fans, for a very long time. They don't seem to worry about bad press or pissed fans, because they keep doing it. They completely misread the market & offer stupid answers thinking people are dumb enough to believe the lies.
A tiny company like Nintendo couldn't predict the demand for their throwback console?
They couldn't notice how fast it was moving?
Didn't think they should maybe make just a few more?
I haven't seen anything this stupid since McDonalds thought a rabid fanbase would accept that they kinda shipped 10 posters & 20 packets of sauce to a handful of stores (and some either didn't get it or an employee is making a killing on eBay).
Maybe its cultural, maybe its being way to far removed from the fans. This has to stop & until the fans are willing to take a stand against stupid ideas.
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I hope that tiny bit was pure sarcasm...
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It's cultural. Nintendo seems to have apathy if not outright contempt for Western audience. This FurAffinity comment goes over it a bit more than I am aware. But I can say that the text input for the Wii U could have had better localization support for English, like capitalizing the first letter in a sentence.
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Re:
I should know, I was one of them. Then I realized that even Linux gaming was less painful. :P I don't know if that's funny or sad or both...
They can't keep their image squeaky-clean when their biggest fans are all around 30 now.
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Not puzzling: Nintendo doesn't want connected with live-streamed suicides,
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Bored Note:
Curious after up for 3 hours and made mistake of reading the comments. You fanboys are noticeably deteriorating.
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Re: Not puzzling: Nintendo doesn't want connected with live-streamed suicides,
If Nintendo did not want a connection with livestreaming, it would use copyright laws to prevent livestreams of Nintendo-related content. Whether it succeeds would be a matter for the courts to suss out…assuming anyone could/would stand up to the Nintendo legal team, that is.
Also: Insulting video game enthusiasts does not help your argument. Implying that gaming livestreamers—or livestreamers in general—are all violent little shits does not help you, either. Try making an argument that does not require ad hominem attacks against a group of people you seem to despise for no reason other than you dislike what they do with their lives.
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Re: Not puzzling: Nintendo doesn't want connected with live-streamed suicides,
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Re: Not puzzling: Nintendo doesn't want connected with live-streamed suicides,
Keep on going and you'll slip off that slope in record time! Meanwhile, have a DMCA vote. Brought to you by that RIAA who represents suicidal artists like Chris Cornell. Golly!
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Let's stamp out buzz
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Nintendo vs Live Streamers
Now look at live streams, they are not exactly quality or scripted. When live streamers like PewDiePie play games while constantly cursing making revolting comments. They might have realized they had no choice.
I blame this on the dependence for youtube aswell, I understand this social media presence. But have something else besides that.
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a few streamers cursing on a stream would hurt their reputation as a family company.
99 per cent of companys know streaming is free advertising and good for your game.
And its about control ,its like the record companys
took years to switch off drm on dogital downloads.
Pubg has sold over 10 miilion games due to streamers
and youtube videos.
The switch is selling due to its a good handheld console and nintendo actually makes good games.
Sony and microsoft have given up on the handheld market .
Theres a gap in the market for a good device ,
someone make a switch clone that plays pc games ,
steam games and can be plugged into a tv and
a dock like the switch.
People still can stream nintendo games on twitch and they dont have to give half their income to
nintendo.
The average nintendo employee is older, 40 to 50 ,
they dont understand youtube .
Other game companys give their games to streamers
to stream or make youtube video,s .
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Re:
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Re:
1. Cursing is more acceptable in Japanese culture. You can find children's shows with cursing.
2. The American branch of Nintendo is usually the more IP aggressive branch compared to the Japanese branch.
Other than that and the possible legal problems regarding cloning, you seem to have some points.
On a side note: Nintendo of Japan seems to have a general thing with not paying attention to problems in the west. That was part of the reason behind the backlash regarding Tomodachi Life. LGBT rights in Japan is nowhere near mainstream compared to the US, which had a supreme court case regarding rights to marriage.
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Re: Re:
All this fearful "monkey-see-monkey-do" babysitting attitude they give to mostly adult Nintendo fans watching livestreams is pretty shitty. Either accept the fanbase, as Satoru Iwata did, or ignore them, those are probably the best choices to make from a PR perspective.
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The NCP Didn't Really Work Anyway
If your video gets a claim against it, even if you are found in the right, you cannot re-monetize the video.
I say this from personal experience. I registered under the NCP when Super Mario Maker came out (was hoping for a bit more of a lifespan post-launch) and stuck with it until now. Random third parties jumped on copyright claim -ing my videos pretty much as soon as they cleared 1000 views. I took it up with Nintendo's corporate relations and named all the party names involved. Luckily enough they have their Nintendo of America support in Vancouver and they were very friendly about talking to me over the phone about the issues. None of the parties listed had any affiliation with Nintendo (as per the representative I spoke with) and the claims were filed in bad faith. Of course, that doesn't matter because...
If your video gets a claim against it, even if you are found in the right, you cannot re-monetize the video.
Since literally anyone can demonetize your videos and you can never undo that the NCP is basically useless.
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Re: The NCP Didn't Really Work Anyway
Vinesauce does a lot of Nintendo-based live streams. Guess he must work only through Twitch, with probably no reasons to look back at this rate.
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