Disney Goes All Disney On The Kingdom Hearts 3 Title Screen Over Streaming

from the house-of-mouse dept

When it comes to the idea of members of the public live-streaming video game gameplay, the world is an unpredictable place. Some developers and publishers are happy to allow such a display of their products, understanding a concept that is apparently difficult for others to grasp: playing a game is a very different thing than watching someone else play it. Those that are less permissive in streaming gameplay are typically the larger corporate interests that tend to believe in control above all else, with the attitude being that unveiling gameplay will make it less likely for viewers to buy a game, rather than more likely. In between is a truly broad spectrum, where some publishers lay out rules on websites and others say little to nothing on the topic that isn't vomited up by their legal teams.

Leave it to Disney, then, to put its stamp on the latest iteration of the Kingdom Hearts series, with a message to anyone that would consider streaming the game right there on the title screen.

People who start playing Kingdom Hearts 3 will find a message notifying them that the companies behind the game are applying some limitations. The game’s title screen includes an unusual button prompt labeled “before you stream.” Pressing the button produces the following message:

This game is a copyrighted work. The copyright is held by The Walt Disney Company and a collaboration of authors representing The Walt Disney Company. Additionally, the copyright of certain characters is held by Square Enix Co, Ltd.

You are free to stream the game in non-commercial contexts. However, using the streams of the game to primarily provide or listen to the music is prohibited even in such non-commercial contexts.

While this is a somewhat permissive stance on streaming, essentially allowing for some streaming under certain conditions, it's still a very Disney way to go about it. First is the company's acknowledgement that streaming is so very much a thing at this point so as to warrant the inclusion of a message on game's title screen. That may seem like a small thing, but it's actually a fairly stark admission on the part of Disney as to what the ecosystem for streaming games is today. And, then, comes the muddled parameters under which streaming is kosher, with restrictions on "commercial contexts", without bothering to provide any context for that phrase itself. And, of course, there is the requirement that game streams aren't done as a method for simply broadcasting the game's original score, which is downright perplexing. I'm not aware of that sort of practice even being a thing and I'm fairly steeped in this world of game streaming.

And I'm not the only one scratching his head at all of this.

The streaming message isn’t exactly crystal clear. One part of it is easily understood: Square and Disney don’t want people making streams of the game’s music. But the statement is more confusing about what the rights-holders consider to be a “non-commercial” stream. The message concludes by directing players to Kingdom Hearts website, which doesn’t yet include any information about this, though it presumably will by the time the game launches in the West on Tuesday (it came out in Japan on Friday).

We asked Square Enix PR yesterday what “non-commercial” streaming would be and if it’s something that average gamers who just want to stream on Twitch or YouTube would have to worry about. They were unable to clarify that terminology yet.

And, so, Disney attempts on the title screen to take the mystery out of what it will allow in streaming the game, but apparently there is still a conversation the company needs to have within itself, as the PR folks can't articulate what it all means themselves. The end result is Disney attempting to assert control over the sharing of parts of its product in the least clear manner possible. It's a very Disney thing to do, in other words.

Meanwhile, it doesn't appear to be keeping the now-normal practice of game streaming from happening overseas.

Whatever the restrictions actually mean, they don’t appear to be stopping people from streaming the game. People have been streaming Kingdom Hearts 3 on Twitch since yesterday, when the game went on sale in Japan and when the the streaming embargo lifted for reviewers and gaming influencers who’d been provided advance access to the English language version of the game. At the time of this writing, there are more than a thousand people watching 88 streams of the game on Twitch.

So, for now, this appears to be a title screen message without much of an audience.

Filed Under: games, streaming, the kingdom hearts 3, title screen, video games
Companies: disney, square enix

The Most Popular Mod For Fallout 4 Is The One That Removes The Title Screen Crawl For Bethesda's 'Creation Club'

from the modding-out-the-mods dept

You may recall that a few years ago, Valve attempted to rollout a platform for video game modders to make money from their efforts. It was an altogether messy attempt for any number of reasons, but chief among them was that the modding community and ecosystem has long operated as a labor of love and not one in which money is exchanged past the point of asking for donations. What Valve attempted to do was fundamentally change that ecosystem without providing a great deal of transparency as to why. One of the primary early adopters of this system in the game publishing community was Bethesda, which opened up Skyrim, a game both wildly popular and one with a robust modding community, to this paid mods platform. In the wake of the backlash, Bethesda ended up refunding all of the mod purchases gamers had made.

But then it much more quietly rolled out its Creation Club, which was something of a paid mods 2.0 attempt. For Fallout 4 in particular, the Creation Club platform was one in which both Bethesda and outside modders could have additional content published for the game in a way codified and supported by Bethesda itself. Outside modding groups would be paid for this work and, in turn, gamers would pay for the content through Creation Club rather than buying the more traditional DLC. It was something of a trade, in other words. No annoying DLC, but pay for the mods of choice through Creation Club.

So, how is that going? Well, the Creation Club community is still there, but relative to most modding communities there isn't a whole lot being offered up, nor purchased. Despite a huge portion of the game's title screen now dedicated to a window for "Creation Club News", gamers don't seem to be adopting it en masse. Unlike, say, Nexus Mods, long the go-to site to find game mods for Bethesda titles. In fact, one of the site's most popular mods for Fallout 4 is a simple mod that gets rid of the title screen crawl for Creation Club.

Enter the “No More Creation Club News” mod by a modder named InAComaDial999. It’s currently the second most popular file of the month on Nexus Mods’ Fallout 4 page. It gets rid of the ad. That’s it.

I imagine, though, that people aren’t downloading this mod because they’re aesthetic purists. They want to stick it to the man, and this feels like a tiny middle finger they can deploy at will.

Look, there may be a way to make paying modders for their work a reality that doesn't almost universally piss off gamers. I personally am skeptical, because the modding scene has always thrived outside of the profit motive as a community. But whatever the answer to that open question is, it should be clear by now that paid mods 3.0 better have a significant amount of thought put into it compared to the first two versions.

Filed Under: creation club, fallout, mods, title screen
Companies: bethesda, valve