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[s0]

so i think it's important to keep in mind that this issue really only applies to a tiny, tiny percent of let's players: those that make money from it. the majority of let's players would not be affected at all if some devs demanded a percent of ad revenue and youtube created a system for that (which i still think is a bad idea, but a lot of people are acting like it's the end of the world if it were done that way). 10% of 0 is still 0.

yes but the same intellectual property argument that many people use in favor of revenue sharing could be used to shut down noncommercial lets plays, gameplay vids, screenshots etc. so theres a potential indirect effect.

[gimymblert]

I'm not sure calling LPer greedy shitlords is much better than calling dev greedy shitlords,

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

@c.a. - ya that's fair, it's possible any system built up to pay dev's royalties may also be used to ban certain content (e.g. banning chrono trigger let's plays entirely if square doesn't want to do the royalty rate thing or whatever)

and i don't think either one is greedy. both indie devs and let's players don't make very much money. it's like dogs barking and fighting over bones when the real money goes to youtube

[Dragonmaw]

YouTube will put your video back up if you make a fair use claim, as long as it's non-profit.

Monetizing your video (aka adding ads) is what causes the problem, because you are then making money using somebody's IP, and YouTube requires you to get permission from the developer for that.

As for YouTube "killing traditional press": no.

YouTube, and user reviews, will never kill traditional press. They are, however, forcing a ground shift away from previews/reviews/news and towards cultural criticism. This is a great thing, IMO.

That said, YouTubers and user reviews are far, FAR more susceptible to astroturfing than a professional journalist, unless they happen to be the biggest names (I would trust PewDiePie to give his actual opinion on a game, but not a mid-tier LPer). There have been a few scandals surrounding this.

I'm not sure calling LPer greedy shitlords is much better than calling dev greedy shitlords,

If the only reason you LP a game is so you can make money off of ad revenue, I'm comfortable calling you a greedy shitlord.

[Kinaetron]

Something we probably should consider is this. From what little evidence I've seen LP's do have a considerable affect on the sales of a game, especially indie titles and it wouldn't be too hard to prove that, especially if the LP's is acting like a decent person and linking directly to the game. Couldn't they make the case that having a decent affect on the sales of the game, they should get a percentage of the money we make based on their impact ? 

[Christian Knudsen]

The devs behind Kerbal Space Program are planning to do exactly that. They'll be providing Let's Players with affiliate links.

[Dragonmaw]

Something we probably should consider is this. From what little evidence I've seen LP's do have a considerable affect on the sales of a game, especially indie titles and it wouldn't be too hard to prove that, especially if the LP's is acting like a decent person and linking directly to the game. Couldn't they make the case that having a decent affect on the sales of the game, they should get a percentage of the money we make based on their impact ? 

No.

[MorleyDev]

I was thinking about the movie analogy, and to me it seems a Let's Play is arguably closer to me writing a highly detailed synopsis of a movies plot. Sure you can read the synopsis and know what happens, but it's still not the same experience as watching the movie. Or does Wikipedia owe the movie industry billions for all the plot summaries?

Couldn't they make the case that having a decent affect on the sales of the game, they should get a percentage of the money we make based on their impact ?  

One could argue that the money they get from ads is their payment for the review/coverage, in the same way that in traditional media gets it's money via advertising/subscribers/magazine purchases. It's supposed to be a symbiotic relationship where the press and developers need each other, whilst keeping impartiality as much as possible.

That said, YouTubers and user reviews are far, FAR more susceptible to astroturfing than a professional journalist, unless they happen to be the biggest names

On the other hand, if a traditional journalist does this they often still keep their job (*cough* Doritos *cough* Halo *cough*), and it's done in sometimes 'subtle' ways. Like, free PS4s and alcohol and holiday and Hawaii where we ply you with food or alcohol before you play the game in our specially build game room subtle.

If a YouTuber gets caught, their integrity is shot and bye-bye viewers. I've more or less lost all faith in traditional journalism for media reviews, don't even pay attention to most of it nowadays when considering a game.

Good reviews use videos to back-up their points and show off the good and bad they find. If they're caught lying, it's easy to prove and it's hard to argue with easy-to-reach video evidence. Let's plays just show you the game, again hard to hide anything. Even if their paid to show you it, showing you the game naked like that makes it hard to hide anything.  

[HDSanctum]

I was thinking about the movie analogy, and to me it seems a Let's Play is arguably closer to me writing a highly detailed synopsis of a movies plot. Sure you can read the synopsis and know what happens, but it's still not the same experience as watching the movie. Or does Wikipedia owe the movie industry billions for all the plot summaries?

You've missed the point. Writing a synopsis of a movie or recording your face while playing a video game are IP that belong to the authors. Including footage of the video game, with sounds/music from the game and demonstration of gameplay mechanics is where it becomes questionable.

Think about this: A Let's Play where you don't get to see a single screen cap or hear a single sound from the game-- you only get to hear the keyboard clicks, voice of Let's Player / footage of their reaction and comments to the game. It's basically an entirely different product (which admittedly, could be done very well).

[Dragonmaw]

On the other hand, if a traditional journalist does this they often still keep their job (*cough* Doritos *cough* Halo *cough*), and it's done in sometimes 'subtle' ways. Like, free PS4s and alcohol and holiday and Hawaii where we ply you with food or alcohol before you play teh game in our specially build game room subtle.

I see you're regurgitating the same bullshit everybody who thinks they have a grasp on game journalism and ethics does. This isn't how it works at all. Jerf Gerstmann did a very good takedown of this mentality, which you should look at. Short version: Nobody does this, you are an idiot for thinking so, the most basic logic in the world disproves your claims.

The worst you can say about professionals is that they sometimes buy into the hype. But this is something that happens to ~literally everybody~ so pointing at traditional reviewers as a problem is asinine. I know many, many professional journalists and reviewers, and they are all consummate professionals that are generally able (with a few exceptions) to separate hype and bias from their work.

BTW, the doritos/dew thing was not the journalist's fault, it was the fault of IGN's bizdev team. Why blame him for something he had no control over?

If a YouTuber gets caught, their integrity is shot and bye-bye viewers. I've more or less lost all faith in traditional journalism for media reviews, don't even pay attention to most of it nowadays when considering a game.

That's exactly the same thing that happens to traditional reviewers, though? Why do you think there isn't concrete evidence of a reasonably well-known site or journalist accepting bribes?

I mean, look at it this way. If you work for Polygon, and you accept a bribe, that's your entire career in the shitter. You are quite literally unhireable by any professional journalistic organization, gaming or otherwise. Why would you accept that bribe?

This gets more muddy when you go down to sponsored sites like Playstation underground or whatever, but if you go to a gaming site like that and don't expect smoke blown up your ass, you're a dipshit.

So basically: you're an idiot, and you hate mainstream journalism because it's cool. Get the fuck out.

[MorleyDev]

Hello, I'm MorleyDev and I'm not being needlessly aggressive and insulting. Nice to meet you.

Now, I may of been misinformed but from what I've read from people from the old timey magazines, there's a history of that thing, and those magazines are more what I consider "traditional journalism" (and they are definitely where you hear the weirdest stories). It seems to have died as a practice when blogging and websites took over though.

Faith may be a poor choice of words on my part. Interest is perhaps closer, it no longer fulfils the requirements as effectively as other mediums for me, and I stopped expecting it to ever meet those requirements, so I don't pay it much mind.

The Doritos Halo comment comment was left in from me writing something else, should of edited it out or moved it. My mistake, I was trying to join some disparate thoughts when writing that and it kinda became one giant mess. It came to mind when talking about the risk of being influenced, but didn't really stick with where the rest of it went.

But still, whilst it may be his managers fault, attitude flows from the top. Such attitudes bares inherent risk of influencing him, through fear of upsetting higher ups or simple exposure, and colouring his reviews. That was the point I originally was thinking of, just forgot to write down xD More institutionalised settings have more points of attack and weaknesses, and traditionally there's been a 'race for the exclusive' that's has been argued to lead to compromises in quality.

And yeah, it doesn't happen nowadays as much, and I do occasionally read websites like RockPaperShotgun, but it's debatable whether they count as 'traditional journalism'. I actually almost consider them more social and closer to YouTube-style reviews than traditional journalism. I didn't even think of them when thinking of 'traditional', and that's my fault.

Such things definitely are less nameless and more personality based, which helps reduce the risks of being influenced beyond 'hopping on the hype'. This also has the advantage that when you get to know a reviewers personality, you know whether to go to them for a specific game to know if it appeals to someone who would like that type of game.

[gimymblert]

I'm not sure calling LPer greedy shitlords is much better than calling dev greedy shitlords,

If the only reason you DEV a game is so you can make money off of any revenue, I'm comfortable calling you a greedy shitlord.

FIXED 

[starsrift]

Something we probably should consider is this. From what little evidence I've seen LP's do have a considerable affect on the sales of a game, especially indie titles and it wouldn't be too hard to prove that, especially if the LP's is acting like a decent person and linking directly to the game. Couldn't they make the case that having a decent affect on the sales of the game, they should get a percentage of the money we make based on their impact ? 

It's almost as if it's a reasonably equitable arrangement already, 'tubers not paying for licensing, devs not paying for advertising.

[Kinaetron]

Something we probably should consider is this. From what little evidence I've seen LP's do have a considerable affect on the sales of a game, especially indie titles and it wouldn't be too hard to prove that, especially if the LP's is acting like a decent person and linking directly to the game. Couldn't they make the case that having a decent affect on the sales of the game, they should get a percentage of the money we make based on their impact ? 

It's almost as if it's a reasonably equitable arrangement already, 'tubers not paying for licensing, devs not paying for advertising.

I know right

[team_q]

If you want to use someone else's stuff for your stuff, you pay them. Who cares if they get bonus sales out of it, it's how many car ads work. They pay the musician and usually the musician sells a bunch more albums, rad.

If you want someone else to make stuff for your stuff, you pay them. Developers do pay video producers to develop videos for them, that's alright, it kinda ruins your critical reputation, but that may not be valuable, e.g. Mega64

If you come to an amicable agreement where noone pays anybody, great.

The key is the words 'amicable agreement'

You want youtubers to go nuts on your next Roguelike, great, say free licence. If you don't want people to give away all your spoilers, or just don't like your stuff being used without your consent(which is fine! MANY musicians do this) that should be cool too! Really the person who makes the work should be the decider. It doesn't really have anything specifically to do with money, it's mostly access and who owns the right to works.

Let's plays are often like rifftrax for video games, and I figure, should be thought of as such, as in, it's bonus commentary of the game. For most rifftrax, you don't get the video along with it, only with special circumstances, where the rifftrax either strike a deal with the movie creators, or it's public domain.

[wolawolawoohey]

Touhou Project anyone?

[Schoq]

Did you ever stop to contemplate how much shittier everything would be of content holders actually had the physical ability to stop people from creating and distributing derivative works

[twotimingpete]

I recognize this is a muddy area, where some games stand to benefit (in sales) from LPs and others stand to benefit little, not at all, or even lose sales.

That said, whether the developer benefits or not in a given case, I don't think it's just or fair to show their entire game's content on youtube, for free, get paid ad revenue, and share none of it. I just don't. We can discuss the merits of LP all day, and we can discuss whether the developer benefits from the PR. I'm sure in some cases they do, especially when it comes to roguelike games.

But the bottom line is -- Is it fair? No, it's not. It just doesn't pass the smell test.

If I took an entire LP video from someone else, and uploaded it to my own channel, and got paid for it, would that be fair? Would I need to add a comment to make it "fair use"? How many comments and reactions are required for it to be fair use? Why don't I just upload all of pewpewpie or whatever's LPs to my own channel and get paid for all of them? I could scream at the start of each one so it's my own content. Is that fair? Why or why not?

[wolawolawoohey]

So if you are supposed to pay people when you make money off their content, does that mean developers should be paying LP'ers for making money off their videos? Because the developers DO make more money because of those videos. And since those videos are not the developer's original content, they didn't earn that money. Give it back to the LP'er right?

You could make an endless chain of who deserves what, and then nobody wins. You can't just arbitrarily draw the line where you reap all the benefits.

[Christian Knudsen]

Let's not be silly. Developers don't use an LP's commentary in their game, but LP's use the game in their LP.

And I agree with Blademasterbobo and others: stop using the term 'fair use'. It doesn't apply in any way whatsoever to what Let's Players are doing. From a purely legal standpoint, Let's Players don't have a leg to stand on. That's why it's so easy to get stuff taken off YouTube (well, that and YouTube are scared that their service might be threatened by exactly this sort of thing, so it's guilty until proven innocent for content creators).

But this isn't a discussion about the legality of the issue. It's about the morality of it: Do YouTubers 'owe' developers royalties? I think most of the discussion is actually people talking past each other because some are discussing the legal perspective while others are discussing the moral. My and other's opinion on the moral perspective is that, no, they do not. Because developers already get more value in advertisement and visibility than the pocket change they'd get from a share of YouTube ad revenue.