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Kotaku: Creator of Super Mario Hacks gets hit hard by Nintendo's Youtube Policies.

Love Nintendo's games, but this is the dumbest thing ever. There's no reason for it and they're only shooting themselves in the foot.
 
Nintendo is a jerk-faced company for taking down the vids. These vids serve as good promotion, as well as foster a thriving community.

People who expect they should get paid for creating content based on other people's properties are delusional. Yes, they work hard and some are very talented, but just because they found a niche and were able to exploit it for awhile doesn't mean that they continuously deserve to make money off the work of others.

Solution: split the money? I don't know. I just hate the whole mess. Can we just warp ahead to a Star Trek utopia where there is no money involved and people just focus on self-fulfillment?
 

Mael

Member
and people don't believe me when I claim that it would be less of a pain for youtubers to have that type of cases solved in a court somewhere.
I'm actually surprised this haven't happened en masse before.
 

Josh5890

Member
There are entire pokemon channels that use nothing but emulated games and hacks. If Nintendo has any consistency they will take down those too.

I mean, it sucks that these videos were taken down, but Nintendo has the right to do so even though people don't agree with it.

I think that is more on the Pokemon Company rather then Nintendo.
 

Red Devil

Member
Nintendo is a jerk-faced company for taking down the vids. These vids serve as good promotion, as well as foster a thriving community.

If it's about hacks not sure how it serves as a promotion, perhaps it does but I'm not sure.

Solution: split the money? I don't know. I just hate the whole mess. Can we just warp ahead to a Star Trek utopia where there is no money involved and people just focus on self-fulfillment?

I'm really pessimistic about that, and seeing the two sides of this I think we keep getting farther away from that.

and people don't believe me when I claim that it would be less of a pain for youtubers to have that type of cases solved in a court somewhere.
I'm actually surprised this haven't happened en masse before.

The problem with that is what happens if they lose? There doesn't seem to be much certainity about the results of that.
 

braves01

Banned
Makes sense. Mario Maker is coming out, and Nintendo doesn't want people publicizing other ways of playing custom levels that could hurt sales. Unfortunate for the youtubers but that's a risk you take building a channel around stuff that's in a grey area and could be legitimately shut down.
 

Deft Beck

Member
Nintendo is within their rights to do this, but it also feels very heavy-handed and destructive to the YouTube gaming community.
 

Josh5890

Member
People who expect they should get paid for creating content based on other people's properties are delusional. Yes, they work hard and some are very talented, but just because they found a niche and were able to exploit it for awhile doesn't mean that they continuously deserve to make money off the work of others.

I agree 100%. Some people feel like they are entitled to make money off of someone else's intellectual property. Most companies don't care that much but they have the right to stop those videos.
 

Monocle

Member
There's no excuse for Nintendo's deplorable Youtube policy. Makes me furious if I think about it for too long.
 

Sephzilla

Member
Yeah, we debated this before and I agree. I would say goodwill lost is probably worse than any profits saved, but I am not them...
I dont think they should go after youtube vids either. For the sake of playing devils advocate; here's the scenario I thought off in my head as to why Nintendo might do something like this.

"So, what if someone puts a rom hack out there that fills a Mario level with tons of Goombas in the shape of a giant penis or replaces text boxes with racist dialogue. What if some parent sees that on YouTube and thinks it's from an online level in Mario Maker that we simply haven't taken down? What if they start some negative PR campaign against us due to a misunderstanding like that?"

With the way social media reacts (and sometimes overreacts) to things I could kind of see this being a scenario. Again this is just something I thought up off from the top of my head for the sake of discussion.
 
If it's about hacks not sure how it serves as a promotion, perhaps it does but I'm not sure.

If nothing else, it keeps the game in the public eye when there are plenty of other distractions out there.

I'm really pessimistic about that, and seeing the two sides of this I think we keep getting farther away from that.

Without any sort of compromise, I'd wager that Nintendo just wins then. It's a clear copyright violation, unless the video falls under some fair use (criticism/reviews, parody.. whatever else.. again, I don't really know the letter of the law).
 

Kodaman

Member
I dont think they should go after youtube vids either. For the sake of playing devils advocate; here's the scenario I thought off in my head as to why Nintendo might do something like this.

"So, what if someone puts a rom hack out there that fills a Mario level with tons of Goombas in the shape of a giant penis or replaces text boxes with racist dialogue. What if some parent sees that on YouTube and thinks it's from an online level in Mario Maker that we simply haven't taken down? What if they start some negative PR campaign against us due to a misunderstanding like that?"

With the way social media reacts (and sometimes overreacts) to things I could kind of see this being a scenario. Again this is just something I thought up off from the top of my head for the sake of discussion.

What? You think that nintendo actually think? That has lawyers and marketing teams? Your crazy...


Not that I agree with this thing but it seems people in here think that this sort of decisions gets done in meetings of 3 minutes.
 
Well, they aren't in the wrong.

It may be dumb but its in their rights to do this. You cant guarantee any income or right to videos that use other peoples content without their consent.
 

Aomber

Member
It's not just Super Mario Maker sales - it affects all their virtual console sales.

Think about this scenario: little johnny owns a Wii U and finds out about the virtual console concept. He thinks to himself, WOW great I can play all these old games that you can't buy in stores anymore, I should really pick up on that.

Later that afternoon he's browsing YouTube and comes across a video with 1+ million views where a guy is playing Super Mario World on an emulator. Johnny looks into the concept of emulation, in turn finds out about ROMs and how you can get them.

Obviously, Johnny isn't going to buy the virtual console games now.

Seriously, think about how many people saw that video, there's a good chance there were a decent number of viewers who didn't know about the concept of emulation. Whether or not emulation is right or wrong is another subject, the point is a lot of it is entirely illegal and ultimately promotes piracy. Honestly that could also lead to more piracy of their modern games as well, let alone just their old ones.

The thing is, when it comes to YouTubers like this, they should really realize what they're getting into is a very shady area especially when you're trying to profit from it. You have to realize that this kind of thing absolutely can happen, so it's ultimately hard to sympathize with it, because it's just the risk you take if that's your way of content creation.
 
It's not just Super Mario Maker sales - it affects all their virtual console sales.

Think about this scenario: little johnny owns a Wii U and finds out about the virtual console concept. He thinks to himself, WOW great I can play all these old games that you can't buy in stores anymore, I should really pick up on that.

Later that afternoon he's browsing YouTube and comes across a video with 1+ million views where a guy is playing Super Mario World on an emulator. Johnny looks into the concept of emulation, in turn finds out about ROMs and how you can get them.

Obviously, Johnny isn't going to buy the virtual console games now.

Seriously, think about how many people saw that video, there's a good chance there were a decent number of viewers who didn't know about the concept of emulation. Whether or not emulation is right or wrong is another subject, the point is a lot of it is entirely illegal and ultimately promotes piracy. Honestly that could also lead to more piracy of their modern games as well, let alone just their old ones.

Poe's Law is messin with my head.
 
Do people think we might ever see a case on this brought up to the courts? There aren't too many YT players big enough yet I think to be able to shoulder a huge legal burden, much less be willing to go through the effort, but I do wonder if stuff like this comes to a head as monetization of videos becomes more and more of a livelihood for people. Genuinely curious, how does this not fall under fair use? Precedent has been set for "transformative" works and TAS'ing sure seems to fall under that umbrella.
 
Do people think we might ever see a case on this brought up to the courts? There aren't too many YT players big enough yet I think to be able to shoulder a huge legal burden, much less be willing to go through the effort, but I do wonder if stuff like this comes to a head as monetization of videos becomes more and more of a livelihood for people. Genuinely curious, how does this not fall under fair use? Precedent has been set for "transformative" works and TAS'ing sure seems to fall under that umbrella.

There's really no legal action you can take right now, since Nintendo is getting youtube to shut it down, not taking it to court directly. And even if it did, I doubt the youtubers would actually win
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
pretty embarrassing for them to get on their high horse about speed runs being evil when they just had a gaming competition where half the competitors they invited and used for free advertising were professional speed runners. Totally and utterly vacuous legal baloney.
 

Josh5890

Member
Do people think we might ever see a case on this brought up to the courts? There aren't too many YT players big enough yet I think to be able to shoulder a huge legal burden, much less be willing to go through the effort, but I do wonder if stuff like this comes to a head as monetization of videos becomes more and more of a livelihood for people. Genuinely curious, how does this not fall under fair use? Precedent has been set for "transformative" works and TAS'ing sure seems to fall under that umbrella.

It would have to take a backing by Youtube. I would be interested to see how the courts rule.
 
I love that they go after, literally, their most ardent fans with this shit.

These are people who invest hundreds or thousands of hours into the games, who provide enthusiasm and create community.

Unfortunately you could see this one coming a long way off, if you're going to do vidyagames on youtube, you need to be 100% that you can put up and monetize videos safely without danger of copyright claims. The power is not in your hands here.

Vast majority of these are done on emulators. How much time they spend playing the game is meaningless when you aren't encouraging people to actually buy Nintendo products. And I really have doubts thatt hese mods helped sell games to be honest. They got a lot of views, but how many made people actually decide to buy a game if they hadn't already?
 
Why go after players instead of people distributing Roms, makes no sense, even if these players are writing emulator code, that doesn't mean they are pirates. This is awful.
 

Josh5890

Member
pretty embarrassing for them to get on their high horse about speed runs being evil when they just had a gaming competition where half the competitors they invited and used for free advertising were professional speed runners. Totally and utterly vacuous legal baloney.

That competition wasn't using tool-assisted games. Nintendo is protecting themselves by taking down videos that misrepresent their intellectual property.
 

stufte

Member
Vast majority of these are done on emulators. How much time they spend playing the game is meaningless when you aren't encouraging people to actually buy Nintendo products. And I really have doubts thatt hese mods helped sell games to be honest. They got a lot of views, but how many made people actually decide to buy a game if they hadn't already?

Sometimes it's more important to foster fan excitement and engagement than it is to sell a 3 dollar VC version of the game. But Nintendo lawyers don't understand that.
 
Why go after players instead of people distributing Roms, makes no sense, even if these players are writing emulator code, that doesn't mean they are pirates. This is awful.

I think they're doing both. I know Coolrom pulled all of their Nintendo stuff down after they were told to, just recently.
 
Why go after players instead of people distributing Roms, makes no sense, even if these players are writing emulator code, that doesn't mean they are pirates. This is awful.

Because that's amuch more hopeless endeavor to be honest. There's a certain logic: If I can't stop people from making roms, I can at least reduce their visibility.

And on another note, I don't really think this was necessary of Nintendo by any means. I just feel the community tends to go overboard on anything like this
 

PSqueak

Banned
What? You think that nintendo actually think? That has lawyers and marketing teams? Your crazy...


Not that I agree with this thing but it seems people in here think that this sort of decisions gets done in meetings of 3 minutes.

That's just one of the things that could go wrong, another couple of things include:

-Confused kids/parents who mistake rom hacks for SMM and ends in returns when they realize their mistake
-People who figure "why would i pay full price for SMM when i can download lunar magic for free?" and it impacts in SMM sales.

I mean, come on guys, yes it's a dick move for the community, but don't pretend all of these things don't have legal repercursions and in the end nintendo has to protect their assets, it sucks but we all know that's how it works, legality of rom hacks is questionable and people profiting from their youtube characters with them were lucky they lasted as long as they did.
 
Sometimes it's more important to foster fan excitement and engagement than it is to sell a 3 dollar VC version of the game. But Nintendo lawyers don't understand that.

What does that mean? And please, explain: What benefit to Nintendo does gain from that if they don't sell more copies of their stuff than they would otherwise. Nintendo is a business, not a charity.

And speed runners spending thousands of hours on one game hurts in another way: If they're spending that much time on an old game, are they actually buying new games?

Again, Nintendo is a business. It's ridiculous to think they'll put anything ahead of the bottom line
 
Makes me glad Sega doesn't care about Sonic hacks.

...Yeah, we don't pat Sega on the back when it comes to YouTube. At one point Sega's Japanese side was slamming down tons of videos of older Shining titles, because there was a new Shining game with a similar name to an old one coming out, and they thought this would be a great way to boost their search ratings for it.

Sega of America apologized, swore it was going to stop.

Then the Japanese side went right back at it again.

There was also another Sega game they went viciously after, but I can't recall what it was.
 

Mael

Member
The problem with that is what happens if they lose? There doesn't seem to be much certainity about the results of that.

Till that happens they're at the mercy of their host which is Youtube.
Youtube isn't gunning for them so they have to beg copyright holders to have mercy on them.
Youtube is shit but it's not new at this point.
 

Nyoro SF

Member
Well, Mario doesn't owe his success to youtube or streamers.

Mario needs all the help he can get in this day and age.

Honestly targeting such a niche group of players is a waste of time and will only rile up your more moderate fanbase, so I have no idea what Nintendo gains from this.
 
Well, Mario doesn't owe his success to youtube or streamers.

Yeah, lets be honest, the games that are really affected that much are small indie games with little to no advertising from obscure studios. With large games like Nintendo's, this won't change anything. There's already awareness generally, and they already have a large enough fan base that a lot of youtubers will cover their stuff regardless of their policies
 

Victrix

*beard*
I wonder how long before this becomes a big court case. Seems inevitable with how many people are making money from streaming and making videos for games.
 
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