are they?
what about ppl testing things ?
they are making profit using lets say adidas/nike gear
there can be positive and negative reviews of that gear
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Because you get the same experience from seeing someone trying some shoes as wearing them yourself.
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- you can make profit exactly the same way
- the manufacteur can loose some money if the product will get low grade by tester (he could sell more of that product, if it wasnt for bad opinion)
why not sue youtubbers for everything i like ?
thats my point
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When the medium is interactive, simply watching it removes the interaction part.
Lets Plays are akin to someone reading a book for a crowd, only the books are of the 'Choose your own adventure' type, with varying degrees of linearity.
To call this piracy is not only inaccurate, but is part of the slippery slope that dips towards demanding people only listen to their music with noise cancelling headphones to prevent eavesdroppers, and that games only be played with no other people in the room.
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I don't want to get in an argument but I just wanted to share a point I don't think I've seen yet. Most posts say that lets plays make it so people don't buy games anymore, they just watch them. I can personally say I know many who after watching groups like funhaus, achievement hunter, or more in depth let's plays that show the whole game go out and buy that game because they want the same experience as the streamer. I know that there is still the other side to it but I just find dit interesting that after watching a whole game people will go out and buy it to try to replicate the experience or to even try to be better than the stream for self gratification
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I tend to avoid let's plays of story-driven games that I'm actually interested in playing. Usually like to watch strategy stuff where there are many different approaches, city builders where the player has a lot of control and MP stuff where the experience is different depending on who you're playing against.
The reason I avoid story-driven lp's of games that I want to play is because I don't want spoilers to detract from my experience. Now if I feel that let's play can detract from my experience of playing a game because I already know what's going to happen then I can also see how some people would just watch let's plays and feel they don't need to buy the game.
Before I had this self-imposed avoidance rule of watching these kind of games in place I did watch one for the first Telltale Walking Dead game. I then had to wait a few months before I could play it as I wanted to give myself a chance to forget what happened. Could easily see how a few months could stretch to a few years or never for others.
Edit: Actually seen some let's plays of story-driven games with no commentary on youtube. I think those people are taking the piss.
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It's part of the "A pirated copy does not necessarily equate to a lost sale" thing.
Where you're actually interested in a story, you want to experience it for yourself and so avoid Lets Plays of those titles. Where you don't know anything about the game, you might hazard a brief watch to determine if it's something you would pick up. If you have no interest, you still might watch an LP out of curiosity or boredom, but wouldn't buy the game for yourself either way.
I don't think commentary is necessary in LPs, just as reading character voices aloud isn't necessary. I mean, I prefer it, but some people don't. Different folks, different strokes, I guess?
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Nah, it's like the contrary, it counts as some sort of advertisement.
Now, I do not like youtubers, in fact I just mute videos, I watch a single video before getting a game to see if it seems worth, without all the "trailer epicness".
If then someone is stupid enough to spoiler themselves an RPG plot or do not see the difference between playing and watching, I can't help it XD
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There's a difference between watching someone else and experiencing something yourself.
Those videos on YT are actually increasing the selling.
I hardly watch them, I only check for videos of games I have and am stuck somewhere.
But my sister, she watches streams from popular youtubers and she does buy those games on the store.
While I only buy for cheap in sales or from bundles - lol.
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That's exactly what I think, watching it and playing it yourself is different and if I like what I see, I can purchase the game to actually play it. I don't watch too many videos either but they certainly help in deciding whether I want to buy a game or not.
Sometimes when I do watch them, they might be games I've already played and I'm just watching it for the comedy.
I don't buy many new releases these days because of my backlog and by the time I get round to it, it's likely to get bundled (Like Victor Vran although I did not expect that one to be bundled - so soon anyway) .
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Recently, a certain game dev company didn't want their game - which was released first in one country (Japan I think?) ahead of the rest of the world - to be streamed/viewed online before it was available worldwide. if you were in the rest of the world, you pretty much had no choice seeing as it wasn't even out yet.
personally I wouldn't want to spoiler something by doing that, unless I had no intention of playing it anyway.
and yeah as alkali said, watching a game, and playing a game are totally different experiences, most of them anyway.
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Would you, then, consider coming to a friend, who gathered some people to watch a movie he bought, a piracy, because none of you paid for it, except for him?
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I remember warnings at the beginning of VHS tapes and DVDs saying not to do this
but I AM in my home... ;)
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Those were the days .... Used to copy my friends vhs films and feel scared when FBI warnings came up at the beginning as a kid. That was when piracy before the internet actually meant something .... It felt wrong lol.
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What miciah said, and for showing them in buses or stuff like that you're supposed to have permission from the copyright holder.
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I tend to agree with you, especially when it comes to the LP videos of story-driven games/vns with no commentary.
PS - You may want to change the thread's title, since a lot of people are clearly replying without having read the actual topic.
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What you're saying is quite false. Youtubers that do "Let's play" videos provide a service to Google and are handsomely compensated for it. It's basically their JOB. Google makes money off of YouTube and shares a part of that with them, It is not a non-profit organization, even if it's free to the majority of users. And the material used is used under FAIR copyright laws. Otherwise Google would NEVER allow it to be placed. It's just that simple. If the owner of a game decides that it doesn't want their material be on YouTube in this format, they can and usually do petition Google to take it off and that's what usually happens. Can some ass-holes decide they no longer want to buy a game cause they saw it's entirety on YT? Sure. Well, that's just a risk the devs will have to take in exchange for all the free publicity YT offers them. Think of something like Netflix. Sure, unlike YT, it totally charges the users, but it has a free trial period. In a whole month you can no doubt see an entire show and that will drive you to no longer buy that show on DVD. Does that mean that you pirated it? Or that Netflix pirated it? NOPE. It's just the way things are. YouTube is just as legit as Netlifx is, only free. It's not the subscription fee that makes the difference between piracy and legitimate use of copyright, that's what you have to understand.
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What?
The youtubers are being paid by google for basically talking over other person's work. What's fair on that? They are profiting of the hard work of developers and game makers.
Netflix buys the shows to feature them, youtube or the streamers don't buy the rights to the games.
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Developers get free publicity. That's where the fairness comes in. Like I said, if they don't want that free publicity they can very easily petition Google to take down the videos. Which almost always happens because Google does not want to risk lawsuits of any kind. But almost no one ever does it, because it works for them. Simple as that.
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Yup, Youtube pays its users based on the numbers of views.
Also, as a developer I can tell you that there is no law that classifies this as piracy. The EULAs don't usually include this and don't clarify the usage of home made videos that include video or audio content from their IP. This leaves an open door to both, IP owners as well as the users that own a license.
If however the IP owner decides it doesn't want its content used like this they can request the video owner to remove its content or to link to the original content (or whatever he wants). If he doesn't, Google will remove it sanction the user. But as far as I am aware there is no legal issue here.
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When it comes to Youtube, you can pretty much just flag it as a copyright violation and they default to erring on the side of the accuser. There are a ton of examples of random people or groups applying pressure through this to have legal or allowed videos to be taken down without proper review. Even in the case that a game creator had no leg to stand on, they can pretty much just fly the bird in the face of anyone they dislike. Thankfully, most creators understand the horrible effect this would have on their reputation, and others seem to appreciate the positive nature of fan content and Lets Plays.
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Vast majority of indie developers give free keys to youtubers if they create gameplay videos so you're wrong. If you are a developer and you don't want to see gameplays from your games on youtube just send them a message and they will remove all videos covering your game(s).
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What's fair is that they're providing content that is in demand, and they are getting something back for it. By the same twist of interpretation, in the case of one of your examples "That Dragon, Cancer" is profiting off someone's terminal suffering.
Only they're not profiting directly off the work, they're profiting off giving exposure to sponsored adverts.
Netflix redistributes content in it's entirety, so it requires those licenses.
Streamers do not redistribute the content, and their income is from ad exposure for the content they produce, hence it is not piracy.
"Fair" is being paid for the work you do, not for the work you don't. That's exactly what is happening, even if there is room for fine-tuning the equation.
If there was a legal grounds for any of this (or even if there wasn't any, but there were damages that could hold up to scrutiny) then there would already be legal cases shaking the matter thoroughly. Rather than focusing on Lets Play people, your criticism would be far better directed at the service providers and the groups generating payment for them.
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its up to the developers really.
if they contact youtube and twich they can litterly take down any single video about the game it anytime. some like telltale fully agree on allowing it because they dont release the full game it once which make tons of people that watch pewdiepie and such buy them
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Personally I don't watch LPs of story games that I want to play because I don't want any spoilers. And if I'm not interested in playing the game, then I'm not going to waste time watching the LP in the first place. What I do find helpful is if I'm on the fence and can watch the first video or two of a story game to see if I think it's worth buying - if it is, then I stop watching and buy the game, if it isn't then I stop watching and forget about it.
My guess is that most people feel the same way, and anyone who sits and watches an entire LP of a story game would never have any intention of paying for it regardless, so I doubt sales would be affected all that much.
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Why does this sound as though it's been written by Digi Hom? Anyway...
Watching a game is not the same experience as playing a game. Streaming/Let's Playing does not equate to piracy and even if it did, piracy does not equate to lost sales. (Streaming/videos by certain YouTube personalities are proven to show increases in sales when they cover a game.)
Also, if you're going to go down the route of it only counting for story driven games, then what about older games that are no longer commercially available, but are still heavily story driven? If I can't legally acquire it, I can either pirate it or watch a playthrough of it, assuming I can't get a hold of it preowned (which a. isn't always an option and b. the devs are making no money from anyway so fundamentally it's the same as piracy.)
People stream/release videos of movies all the time with commentary and criticism over the top - if it can be shown to used in fair use, then it's perfectly legal.
You seem to be under the impression that these people are putting no effort or work into creating these videos and are just copying whole sale the game. As someone who has worked professionally as a content creator for various companies in the past, I can tell you that this is far from the truth. A five minute video can require many more hours of work put into it.
Then there's the matter of archival. With the systematic erasure of previous console generations by the big three through lack of backwards compatibility, some older games are completely fading into obscurity and will probably be lost forever eventually. Which shouldn't be the case for any form of media in an ideal world.
As a final note I'd like to bring up the fact that of the big three console, two feature built in streaming. Steam has a built in streaming service and a lot of games now have a built in streaming feature. If publishers/devs didn't want people to do it, these simply wouldn't exist.
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I personally don't think a Lets play is a form of Piracy on 99.9999% of the games out there. I have bought probably at least 50-100 games after watching a Let's play, so if anything, it is a free form of publicity for the developer that they probably don't have the funds to pay for that kind of advertising if they wanted to.
I had heard of That Dragon, Cancer, but never thought anything of it before this post here. I went and read the article relating to the controversy regarding the game, and even went and watched small scenes of the game on Pewdiepie's channel and another Youtuber's stream. I do agree this game falls into that 0.00001% of games where its in a grey area. I will say though, Pewdiepie stopped his video at about the 66% mark, as he didn't feel it was ok to Let's Play the entire game because of its content. The other Youtuber I watched mentioned he was donating at least part of the revenue stream from the game to Cancer Research.
First off, I don't understand the gaming industry, I admit fully, but by the sales on Steam alone, considering the price of the game, I estimate it has made at minimum $250,000. Not sure how or why Steam hasn't given them at least $1 for the game so far. I have heard they made over $100,000 in the Kickstarter as well. While not alot, it is something.
The game itself, from what I have seen in short clips looks like a 1.5 hour movie with little to no interaction from the person playing the game. So yes, it plays like a short film, which is where I can see it might fall into the grey area for a person watching it on YouTube as a Let's play might actually effect the game. But I also think the price they are asking for watching (Playing) the game is a bit high with such little playability, I am assuming they will get more sales after the price falls to the $5-$10 mark. Also on the other hand, the content of the "game" is such that many/most gamers won't actually want to play it. It is a niche market. I know I would never watch the full video on YouTube, or if the game was given to me for free. For me, games are supposed to be fun and to get away from the world. This game seems to be for someone looking for a crying simulator.
Also, there are alot of questionable things regarding this "Game". In the notes, it says the game was made as a Love letter to his son, to share his story. I would think the parents should enjoy the fact that their son's story is getting to as many people as it is, even if not all the money is going to them. I would think, as most people dealing with the death of friends\family from Cancer that the added donations to the Cancer foundation would be a bonus as well. Not only from the YouTubers that are donating part of their revenue stream, but I do believe the storyline would probably get alot of the viewers to loosen their pursestrings and donate as well. Also it was mentioned that the game was made with 8 game developers spending thousands of hours each to create the game. But on the Steam notes it mentions it is an independent project made by 2 people and that the Green family as well as the rest of the Numinous Team did not produce it, but that they are honoured by the subjects of the film. Which is it?
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Sooo, new discussion topic.
This week I'm gonna state my hatred towards Let's Plays of story driven games, walking simulators and interactive movies because consuming said content is, from my point of view, really close to piracy.
You might be wondering, MrCastiglia are you nuts? What the hell are you going about in here?
Well, it's really simple, if the narrative experiencie is pivotal to the appeal of the game, and/or in many cases the game's only selling point. What's the difference, as far as the makers are concerned, between pirating a copy of the game and watching its entirety on youtube? I'd say there's none, not to mention that to add insult to injury the streamer/youtuber/whatever is getting revenue from others persons content, so not only the general public can experience the game for free in its entirety but someone else apart from the developer is profiting from it.
Is this moral? I don't think so.
One could argue that the streamers provide content that is not there in the original game, and I say you have a point when it comes both to innovative ways of beating the game (such as speed runs/ Guitar Hero controller runs/blinfolded runs and so on) or when the game is designed in such a way that the mechanics, difficulty or player interaction (to name a few) are what make or break it. To name some examples, Dark Souls saga, Minecraft or the recent Enter the Gungeon could be freely streamed and monetized in my opinion, because the selling point of your video is not the game per se but the use and experience you provide while playing it.
But, lets all think for a moment. What happens if I watch someone play the entirety of, let's say, some Telltale games, or the title That Dragon, Cancer, is the streamer adding anything of value to the experience? I don't think so. Would you consider it not piracy if someone streamed a movie while shrieking all over it? I would.
Discuss on, fellas.
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