PewDiePie Against Nintendo's Cash Share Plan

[Koh]

http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/30/7952367...share-plan

Thar be the article.

So it's not news that Nintendo has been trying to get their hands in some of the ad revenue on videos that feature their content.  The cash share plan is sort of a way to allow the video makers to continue to get revenue, while also sending some back to the producers of whatever content is featured in their video.  PewDiePie doesn't agree with it.

What are your thoughts?

[psychospacecow]

He doesn't have to agree with it.

[Dolphman]

Man, this guy is just lame. Seeing him on South Park sums up my opinion towards many let's plays around the net. His humor is so mediocre.
The only let's plays i really watch are by Rooster Teeth. My brother got me into them after showing me some of their vids and as well as RWBY.
Plus the ones by James Rolfe and Mike Matei of Cinemassacre. Mostly due to their interests in horror, movies, animation, and games.

Not sure about this. They should just see the videos as free publicity since it helps advertise them and gets people to want to buy their games.

[Jermungandr]

Definitely not a fan of Pewdiepie. As far as the issue he's presenting here .... nnn ... I mean, it sucks but in all rights Nintendo could be forcing people to take down their videos altogether, and with that in mind the situation doesn't seem like an unfair compromise. He's basically whining that he can't make all the profit off of other people's copyrighted material. Why would you even expect that to be a thing?

[[robo9]]

I'm sorry, but why do I give a fuck about wat Pewdiepie thinks? The dudes like the Adam Sandler of gaming, except his early stuff is still pretty shit (unlike Sandler)

[TomGuycott]

What this translates to me: Guy stands to lose money because something someone else wants to do to make money, so naturally Guy 1's stance is against that. I mean, it makes perfect sense that he'd want to do that, so I can't fault him for that.

However, I feel like if Nintendo wants to do something in this situation, it's certainly within their boundaries to do something if they want to. I also don't buy into the "free publicity" crap, for this or for anything else. Why take free publicity when you can take publicity and profit?

Also I'm really tired, I barely know what I'm talking about. I also don't watch PewDiePie, so I don't really care or have any perspective.

[Gwen]

Why the fuck shouldn't Nintendo get a slice? Their content is being used to generate money, naturally they should get a fucking slice. PewDiePie annoys me so god damn much, and this entitled attitude that Let's Plays have as far as money goes really annoys me.

I am also really tired, my brother stole my only pillow for his friends and that makes me really cranky and pissy, soooo that's how the cookie crumbles.

Reading through the comments in that article and LOL at those who seriously thinks that Nintendo needs Let's Player's as free advertisement. That's absolutely delusional and just trying to weakly justify why Nintendo shouldn't get a share of the profits. Nintendo has their own vision for advertisement (also insert any other large company) and the only scenario you can really argue for free advertisement is small indie games.

[Lemonray]

Why the fuck shouldn't Nintendo get a slice?

Because they are mean, greedy capitalists >:( grrr.

[Koh]

I'm not a fan of PewDiePie's channel myself (I can't say anything about him as a person though, I've never met or spoke with him), but I'm on Nintendo's side myself.

Everytime something cropped up about Nintendo doing something with their copyrighted content, I've always been on their side, because these people are literally getting paid just to play through their game and talk over it the whole video. It'd be no different if someone did the same to a movie. You're basically revealing all the contents in a product that people would otherwise have to pay to see. Sure, games have an interaction layer that you just don't get by watching videos, but at the same time, especially for story-driven games, the story is a good portion of the game. If you see all the cutscenes somewhere online (*cough*like I did with the Ace Attorney games*cough*), you don't have as much incentive to get the games as you did before.

This "free advertising" argument doesn't work for big time companies anyway. They don't need some YouTuber to advertise their games; word gets around just from the fans alone, and their showcase streams. That argument really only holds water for small indie projects, and those people are usually okay with it.

[E-Man]

I'm a little mixed about this whole situation. While there's no way anyone will pay me to ever watch PewDiePie's videos, I've heard relatively positive things relating to how he is in real life (i.e. being down to earth, donating money). If you take a look at some of the comments (particularly the ones by Bowlingotter), they mention that PewDiePie acknowledges that Nintendo's plan makes absolutely no difference to him. Instead, he's more concerned about the smaller channels that actually need the exposure and monetary support.

While it does sound good in a perfect world for Nintendo to just accept the free publicity, looking at the other side of the argument made me realize why that's not a good idea either. Nintendo made these games to begin with and they have every right to yank all the content down that uses their intellectual property if that needs to be the case. The let's players are pretty fortunate that Nintendo is not sending any takedown notices, and Nintendo itself could use the extra money to refine and make better games.

With that said, I think their profit sharing plan could work if it was tweaked a little more to cut smaller channels some slack. If a channel is starting out, it receives significantly larger share of the profits until it becomes larger and more popular. Then, Nintendo will have a larger percentage depending on the size of the channel. Also, this is a little bit of wishful thinking, but I would like the ability for channels to willingly accept smaller shares from the ad revenue in exchange for the promise of additional support from Nintendo.

[Kriven]

The only part of this program I don't like is Nintendo now being able to reject an LP they dislike. Profit-sharing makes sense to me.

[E-Man]

Thank you for bringing that up since it lets me segue into something I wanted to bring up in my last post.

I honestly don't mind in the grand scheme of things that people have to share money with Nintendo (I probably would have done it willingly anyway if I had a famous YouTube channel), but the part about the possible restrictions makes me uneasy. Sometimes you got to tread down a slightly dodgy path to push the boundaries of informative shows, comedy, and general entertainment. My concern is that Nintendo wouldn't like that kind of stuff and might make it a black and white situation that will result in more than just forfeiting revenue shares. For example, I don't want to see a channel get terminated because a lets player made a playful jab at Nintendo. (I know that's not going to happen, but at least you get what I'm implying, right?)

My other big concern is if Nintendo's plan also covers other fan related mediums, such as fan animations. As an animator, I don't want Nintendo to lash out at me if I create something that isn't exactly by the book.

[Koh]

I only really see them using that for things that aren't family friendly, or safe for work. While that kind of toilet humor is funny to some, Nintendo wouldn't view it as something a kid should watch. Nintendo's entire campaign is based around the fact that they're a family friendly company, so naturally if they're going to partner with Youtubers, they'll want whatever is produced to be safe for the viewing eyes and listening ears of kids.

[Kriven]

I only really see them using that for things that aren't family friendly, or safe for work.  While that kind of toilet humor is funny to some, Nintendo wouldn't view it as something a kid should watch.  Nintendo's entire campaign is based around the fact that they're a family friendly company, so naturally if they're going to partner with Youtubers, they'll want whatever is produced to be safe for the viewing eyes and listening ears of kids.

This is the problem exactly. Not a defense.

Is Nintendo going to insist Robot Chicken cease all Nintendo parodies? If not, then why should home grown entertainment (which they profit from) be any different?

[Gwen]

Well they can't because Robot Chicken's protected by claiming it's parody. I'm guessing it's more so towards they don't want to be associated with Let's Plays that aren't family friendly and aren't parodying.