Nintendo copyright claims on Minecraft videos with Mario DLC

Mark Hamill

Nintendo is now filing copyright claims on Minecraft WiiU videos that have the Super Mario Mash-Up Pack DLC in them.
That is despite the console developer of Minecraft saying that Nintendo assured them it wouldn't happen.

Last year (or was it 2014?) Nintendo came down hard on speedrunners and romhackers on youtube under the notion that such videos were infringing on their IP. They now have some partnership program for youtubers who want to put up videos of their games, which include such doozies as:
-Nintendo either gets 30% of ad revenue of all videos on a registered channel (not just nintendo games) or 40% of ad revenue on individually registered videos. Nintendo also gets their cut first, before the video creator.
-Can only be of games on their whitelist (which omits games like Super Smash Bros and Pokemon).
-They have creative control (videos must follow their terms of service and style guidelines).

I can sometimes see where some of the copyright claims against movie critics on youtube might be coming from, some of them do use a not-insignificant amount of footage for their reviews (I would still generally disagree, but I can see where the argument comes from). But video-games are not movies, watching someone play a game will not effect your playing the game in the same way watching a spoiler- and clip-filled review of a movie might effect your viewing of the movie. The popularity of videogame videos on youtube is primarily down to the personalities making the videos, not really to the games themselves - I don't know of any popular youtuber putting videos of gameplay without any narration, chat or skits surrounding them. No-one is interested in "self-plays", where games play themselves when the menu screen times out (do games still do that?).

I think Nintendo is seriously out of touch with moves like this.

Retr0gamer

Hopefully Nintendo sees some sense in how stupid this is. These things never really come from the company and are usually from their lawyer brigade looking for ways to justify their existence on the company payroll.

Sonics2k

Nintendo are trying to overthrow Konami as biggest gob****es

Nody

It's Nintendo; they have been doing that since the day of dawn since their execs in Japan don't understand how Youtube works in practice which has been confirmed by their American branches etc. as well. The answer of course is if you do it to make money well tough luck; if you do it without monitization you go down the Jim Sterling deadlock route and give the middle finger response to Nintendo while keeping it up.

Nody

Nody wrote: »

It's Nintendo; they have been doing that since the day of dawn since their execs in Japan don't understand how Youtube works in practice which has been confirmed by their American branches etc. as well. The answer of course is if you do it to make money well tough luck; if you do it without monitization you go down the Jim Sterling deadlock route and give the middle finger response to Nintendo while keeping it up.

Wonder how many claims he had against that video, couldn't see any mention in the comments

Nody

Deleted User wrote: »

Wonder how many claims he had against that video, couldn't see any mention in the comments

Well there's at least 3 video game claims, 3 music claims and 2 movie claims that I spotted so I'd guess 6+ is a fairly good guess

At the end of the day though two is enough; anything more is simply additional precaution in case a claim does not come through.

FAILSAFE 00

Nintendo have become right dicks.

Its sad to see it when I think back to Nintendo's glory days in the 80s and 90s.

They are so out of touch with reality. If the next console flops they are done for in the console hardware market.

johnny_ultimate

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I can sometimes see where some of the copyright claims against movie critics on youtube might be coming from, some of them do use a not-insignificant amount of footage for their reviews (I would still generally disagree, but I can see where the argument comes from). But video-games are not movies, watching someone play a game will not effect your playing the game in the same way watching a spoiler- and clip-filled review of a movie might effect your viewing of the movie. The popularity of videogame videos on youtube is primarily down to the personalities making the videos, not really to the games themselves - I don't know of any popular youtuber putting videos of gameplay without any narration, chat or skits surrounding them.

While this is true for many games - perhaps quadruply so for Minecraft, which is a game pretty much about sharing limitless creations - I do think it's worthwhile to point out that many smaller, narrative-based games can potentially suffer from this affliction you mention above. The team behind That Dragon, Cancer wrote a very IMO fair and reasonable response about the conflicts between allowing YouTubers cover their game and YouTubers sharing their entire game (http://www.thatdragoncancer.com/thatdragoncancer/2016/3/24/on-lets-plays). They particularly pointed out how it can be frustrating to see, for example, their composers' music used so widely in videos while actual sales have meant it has been a challenge to actually pay him in the first place.

We are asking that you return that favor by creating Let’s Play videos that don’t just rebroadcast the entirety of our content with minimal commentary, but instead use portions of our content as a context to share your own stories and start conversations with your viewers. We would encourage you to link to our site and directly encourage viewers to support our work financially through buying the game, or donating a dollar or two to our studio if they believe that what we did has value. This small act will allow us to continue to work.

Again, I think that's a perfectly fair and even very generous response. Not every game is a sandbox or open-ended title (really, entire genres such as 'survival games' have sprung up and gained popularity due to streaming culture), and certainly I don't think in scenarios like the one above developers are being unreasonable in highlighting some of the potential issues with Let's Play videos

Stone Deaf 4evr

FAILSAFE 00 wrote: »

Nintendo have become right dicks.

Its sad to see it when I think back to Nintendo's glory days in the 80s and 90s.

They are so out of touch with reality. If the next console flops they are done for in the console hardware market.

I remember when I was just getting into console gaming back on the Sega megadrive, all the cool , edgy genre defining stuff came out of Japan. Now, they have almost nothing that interests me. In a way, it's not surprising to read stories about people like the staff that created gunstar heroes, who never knew their games were held in such high regard in the west. They're operating in their own little bubble

Sieghardt

FAILSAFE 00 wrote: »

Nintendo have become right dicks.

Its sad to see it when I think back to Nintendo's glory days in the 80s and 90s.

They are so out of touch with reality. If the next console flops they are done for in the console hardware market.

They seem to be doing everything they possibly can to create as much negative sentiment as possible before they even announce their next console

dunworth1

FAILSAFE 00 wrote:

They are so out of touch with reality. If the next console flops they are done for in the console hardware market.

What's your basis for this?

The wii u has sold about 20 million units while it didn't sell as much as the ps4 it's not exactly a flop either.

If i created a game and then people decide to record it and try to make money off it tbh I'd probably want a cut of that aswell. It'd be different if they weren't making money from it but some of the youtubers make serious coin off the back of other people's work

I'm surprised ea and the like haven't started doing this yet

Retr0gamer

dunworth1 wrote: »

I'm surprised ea and the like haven't started doing this yet

They have. Activision, Ubisoft, Konami and Sony are doing the same and are as bad if not worse than Nintendo but nobody seems to want to report on that.

Sieghardt

Retr0gamer wrote: »

They have. Activision, Ubisoft, Konami and Sony are doing the same and are as bad if not worse than Nintendo but nobody seems to want to report on that.

SEGA do it too, quite frustrating that they wont even let fans market the games they fail to market themselves

Mr.Saturn

dunworth1 wrote: »

What's your basis for this?

The wii u has sold about 20 million units while it didn't sell as much as the ps4 it's not exactly a flop either.

Figures from Gamespot, VGChartz and TechInsider place the Wii U at nearly half that with between 10-12 million sales. Given there's a successor on the horizon and there's really no true killer app left, with Zelda being a dual release, it's a pretty safe bet that the Wii U will be Nintendo's least successful home console coming in at nearly 10 million short of even the Gamecube, and one-tenth of the Wii's figure.

Granted, it depends on what one defines as a flop. On the software side, it's got some of the best games I've ever played, but yeah, if it was designed to compete with XB1 or PS4, then it's failed. If it was designed to build on the momentum of its predecessor and eventually outsell it, then it failed there too. Even more, ignoring that, if it was merely designed to make a tidy profit, then my limited research informs me that it has barely recovered costs and made profit over its lifespan, and even that was a result of heavy costcutting measures through Nintendo's corporate make-up.

So yeah, as much I enjoy my Wii U and get plenty of use from it, I'd feel comfortable placing it the 'flop' pile for those reasons.

FAILSAFE 00

dunworth1 wrote: »

What's your basis for this?

The wii u has sold about 20 million units while it didn't sell as much as the ps4 it's not exactly a flop either.

If i created a game and then people decide to record it and try to make money off it tbh I'd probably want a cut of that aswell. It'd be different if they weren't making money from it but some of the youtubers make serious coin off the back of other people's work

I'm surprised ea and the like haven't started doing this yet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_U

Units shipped Worldwide: 12.80 million
(as of March 31, 2016)

Its widely considered a flop.

dunworth1

FAILSAFE 00 wrote:

Its widely considered a flop.

Ah yes the power of media perception.

Edit: I see where I seen 20m that's the amount of amibio figures that have sold

12m units for a console which is pretty much only first party titles is still good

FAILSAFE 00

dunworth1 wrote: »

Ah yes the power of media perception.

Edit: I see where I seen 20m that's the amount of amibio figures that have sold

12m units for a console which is pretty much only first party titles is still good

Its unfortunately not.

I can't really sugar coat it. Which is why Nintendo went back to the drawing board.

The original Wii sold 101.63 million units.

Retr0gamer

Sieghardt wrote: »

SEGA do it too, quite frustrating that they wont even let fans market the games they fail to market themselves

Sega are probably even worse again. They filed take down notices on everything on YouTube featuring shining force, even videos with no actually video or music. And they did this because the producing of the latest Shining series game wanted his game to appear at the top of YouTube searches for shining force.

It's even more heinous when said shining series is a complete trainwreck that has been bastardised beyond believe over the original games vision into a tropey anime piece of ****.

dunworth1

FAILSAFE 00 wrote:

Its unfortunately not.

Says who?

It's sold almost half of what the xb1 has sold (well maybe as we aren't actually sure how many xb1s have been sold)
All on the back of first party titles for which Nintendo gets the profit.

Selling 12 million units of something is far from a flop a flop would be if it wasn't selling at all and nobody wanted it.

Super Mario maker has sold 3.5 million copies since its launch in September

According to reddit halo 5 has sold around 3 million copies.

So if there is indeed a lot more xboxs out there then Nintendo first party titles are still selling pretty well on the wii u compared to the "next weakest" consoles first party titles

FAILSAFE 00

dunworth1 wrote: »

Says who?

Says Nintendo.

http://nypost.com/2014/01/19/nintendo-admits-wii-us-failure/

Its a flop. Thats why the NX is being made right now.

K.O.Kiki

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Sega are probably even worse again. They filed take down notices on everything on YouTube featuring shining force, even videos with no actually video or music. And they did this because the producing of the latest Shining series game wanted his game to appear at the top of YouTube searches for shining force.

It's even more heinous when said shining series is a complete trainwreck that has been bastardised beyond believe over the original games vision into a tropey anime piece of ****.

I still remember, years ago, I got hit with copyright notices from SEGA over Melty Blood footage - a game they only published in Japanese arcades (I was playing the PC version published by Type-Moon).

Still salty all these years later.