Back in January, Nintendo announced a new policy on handling let's players, videogame critics and all YouTube videos that uses any of their material. In the policy it was said that should YouTubers agree to this policy then Nintendo gets a 40 percent cut of the revenue from those videos, but there's more, they can only play Nintendo games allowed by the company, and they can only play Nintendo games, so nothing for PC, Xbox or Playstation, just Nintendo. Now even at a quick glance you may be able to see how stupid of a policy this is, by pretty much exploiting their power as a large co-orporation to manipulate and abuse smaller and more independent businesses, seeing as most YouTubers, especially critics and lets players, are just one man shows.
So let's analyse the problems with this system one by one, starting with the percentage cut; Nintendo gets a 40% cut of your revenue, now this might need some clearing up, remember, YouTube also gets a 40% cut, so is this 40% taken out of that initial gross, or is it 40% of your 60% that gets taken? Because either way that sounds like you're getting screwed out of your money and despite you doing the most work, you seem to get the least amount of pay. So say you made £1000 on a video, YouTube takes their cut, so you have £600, but if Nintendo takes a 40% cut too then you only have £240 left, or if they do it the other way then you're only left with £200, out of an initial £1000 revenue. And when this is someone's job, that's not really a whole lot to live off of, and i doubt Nintendo is struggling to the point where £400 is going to save their business, so it's completely not necessary.
Not to mention, what is the thinking behind this? "They're making money off of our product and we didn't!" well no that's not true, they bought the game, they bought the console, they bought the controllers, they gave you their money, they already paid so they could do this. And don't go throwing about your copyright claims because it's protected under fair use of them making critique and commentary over your games. Even more so, Nintendo has some pretty good games our right now like Bayonetta 2, Super Smash Bros, Majora's Mask 3D, games that I would have had absolutely no interest in if it wasn't for YouTube gamers talking about them so much, they say how awesome they are and i think "wow, if they like it, maybe i should play it" and i know i'm not the only person who has thought this, how many copies of Nintendo games have been sold because Caddicarus, ModernWarNegro, Total Biscuit or dozens of other YouTube gamers saying how awesome they are.
Then there are the other issues, they can only talk about Nintendo games, and even then, only a pre-approved list of Nintendo games...Because fuck free speech apparently. YouTube has always been a great service because it means anyone and everyone can use it, people can turn on a camera and talk about their opinion on a videogame. And several years ago, gamers faces a similar issue, YouTube's copyright system went hyper-sensitive and was flagging everyone left and right and some companies were abusing this power, thankfully these days things are getting better, except Nintendo had to go and throw a spanner in the works and try to be a dictator and tell people what they can and cannot do, because apparently Nintendo lives in 1984 (At least they'll be popular again).
Now the reason why i'm bringing this up now when the policy was installed in January is because recently, YouTuber Angry Joe did a let's play of Mario Party 10, it got taken down and he did a rant, discussing a lot of what i've talked about here and announced he will not be making any more Nintendo videos. This has gotten a surprising amount of attention and has become a big news story and has brought up the debate again, except this time more of "Is Angry Joe in the right?". Because Joe knew about this policy so he shouldn't have made a video. On one hand, I can see where they're coming from, except this isn't the end all-be all rule that will be set in stone for eternity and no possibility of it changing, people want the rule to be changed, because the system is fucking stupid, it's harming someone's lifestyle and just creating bad press for Nintendo, he complains about it, brings up the conversation again and maybe, just maybe, Nintendo will finally fucking listen. But nope, some people, not taking names (ROOSTER TEETH) would rather patronise Joe and say "you should have done what you were told ya big dumb-dumb!" because i'm sure this system will sort itself out if no one ever talks about it or does anything about it...right?
Joe Vargas currently has over 2 Million subscribers on YouTube who all care about his opinion, and if he says don't buy Nintendo games, a lot of them are probably going to listen, I know i certainly don't want to support these cunts anymore. Not to mention getting support from Boogie, NerdCubed, even fucking Polygon is on his side...Polygon. Fact is, there is no end result here that looks good for Nintendo, you fuck over the little guy and suddenly you lose a lot of consumers and you get a really bad reputation, the Wii U was struggling as it is, you don't need bad PR like this. Now one of the arguments in favour of Nintendo is that they do have to right to prevent people talking about their content, positive or negative, yes but again, that's a really bad business practise, if so many people are giving you free publicity and telling everyone to buy your games, give me one logical reason why they should do it? Remember, if you don't criticise a faulty system then nothing's going to get any better. The other argument is, even under fair use, they still deserve a percentage of revenue from it, and that i agree with, it is their material and YouTubers wouldn't be able to make that video without it, but not 40%, something more like 10%, they already paid for the game, they're giving you free publicity and it's not like you're dying for the revenue, anything more is just going to harshly affect the actual YouTuber, thus encouraging them to make less videos featuring your product.
So yes, I am on Joe's side, I think Nintendo needs to seriously update their policy here because with it, no one comes out the hero on the other side. Also Rooster Teeth can go fuck themselves.
-Danny
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