Nintendo has been issuing copyright strikes against content creators that use gameplay footage of their games, even though it is clearly allowed by their Content Guidelines. This is mostly, but not only, Zelda Breath of the Wild content, and mostly, but not only, modded game content.
It is putting the livelihoods of those content creators in danger. Apparently the creator in question (PointCrow) hasn't heard anything back from Nintendo after contacting them about the issue.
I feel like this is yet another example of a large company acting in a way that hurts both their customers and themselves. I don't think it costs them anything to allow the creators to make that kind of content; rather it will make people more aware of their games, potentially increasing sales. The most prominent of these creators will now be very wary of posting content about the upcoming Zelda Tears of the Kingdom game which will most certainly hurt initial sales of the game.
> I feel like this is yet another example of a large company acting in a way that hurts both their customers and themselves.
This is pretty specifically a Nintendo thing. Sony, MS, and pretty much every major game studio are fine with people streaming content of their game, even mods. Hell, it usually ends up being the opposite--game studios offer 6 or 7 figure deals to popular streamers to play their game as marketing play. Worked for Apex Legends.
Nintendo has always been really, really aggressive about this, to the point where it doesn't make sense. They've aggressively cracked down on fan projects (e.g. AM2R) which is at least arguably justifiable from a copyright/IP perspective. But they've also threatened to take down any speedrun video with a Nintendo game in it. And they had a major row with EVO about whether Smash could even be played at the tournament a few years back; during a time when companies were throwing tens of millions of dollars to get into the esports scene, Nintendo was refusing a handout on a golden platter.
It used to be very much a Japanese game developer mentality (Sony excluded) to strike or at last claim gameplay videos. SEGA used to pull this all the time two back in the day, and still do for certain elements of games, like cutscenes in certain games like Persona (Atlus is a subsidiary).
Nintendo just never stopped like you've articulated really well. They seem to hate that their most avid fans show how much love they have for their IPs.
The criteria listed by noirscape way above is well laid out, and it's not just game developer. Dojinshi, AI arts... It's the Japanese mindset. The bundles of bank notes left on the table are, just, notes. Sales is just someone else's business. Those are never the point.
If you call them first for a profit sharing scheme, only then sometimes some cares, but still it's more for the scheme.
SEGA literally DMCAed every single YouTube video of the original Shining Force to prevent people from comparing the original to the remake.
As in, they searched Shining Force and send DMCA strikes to every single video they could find. They only backtracked after they got a literal metric fuckton of negative press due to it.
> ...during a time when companies were throwing tens of millions of dollars to get into the esports scene, Nintendo was refusing a handout on a golden platter.
The E-sports scene is kinda awful, to be honest. Historically, Nintendo has been interested in making fun and interesting toys for people to play with. E-sports people are usually VERY SERIOUS about what they do, and often VERY PARTICULAR about how games work, and VERY VOCAL about changes to a game that radically changes how they've become accustomed to playing the game.
Catering to money-making E-sports is generally incompatible with making fun and interesting toys... they're just two radically different and largely incompatible audiences.
> they're just two radically different and largely incompatible audiences
This is incorrect, and I think you're maybe missing some context. What is being referred to here isn't esports players being whiny or particular about changing a game in a way that would hurt casual users. What's happened a few times recently is that Nintendo were very heavy handed in cracking down on things like Smash Brothers e-sports tournaments: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/30/23485811/nintendo-smash-...
So here they have already made a game that is beloved by both casual players and professional players, and they seem really keen on cracking down on the latter group. They don't need to take any special steps to cater to e-sports players or tournaments, they just needed to not go out of their way to crack down on them.
No, I'm not missing any context. The E-sports audience is largely incompatible with the audience that enjoys playing with fun and interesting toys.
Completely incompatible? No, and that's not what I said. In any sufficiently-large group there will be exceptions to that group's general tendencies.
Were I Nintendo, I would definitely take pains to put a big damper on people and organizations who wanted to do "professional" E-sports to my toys... which seems to me to be exactly what they're doing.
Wait now you're now making a different point entirely. Before you suggested they shouldn't need to go out of their way to treat e-sports any differently (to accomodate them) because they're not the target market. Now you're saying they should go out of their way to treat them differently (to punish/hinder them) because they're not the target market?
Look I get that e-sports isn't for everyone, it's certainly not for me. But this doesn't make sense, and I suspect that this push against e-sports or modding isn't coming from the creative minds behind the games themselves, but by management who couldn't care less about whether something is or is not a toy. It's the people who just want to see black on their end of year balance sheets and don't understand how e-sports or modding would impact that (including how it could even improve it)
> Wait now you're now making a different point entirely.
No. You misunderstood what I've been saying since the first paragraph of my initial post.
I've been consistently saying that the E-sports is kinda awful, and that that scene is generally at odds with the sort of folks who like playing with fun and interesting toys.
Once the E-sports locusts solidly descend on something, its nature gets changed (by association, at minimum). Nintendo clearly (and correctly) doesn't want that, so they're right to discourage it.
They're a "fun and interesting toy" company, not a "professional, competitive e-sports games" company.
Respectfully, you don't know what you're talking about.
Nintendo has a history of hosting competitive tournaments for games such as Pokemon (and even in a limited capacity Smash Bros). They even made a Pokemon game targeted at competitive players called Pokemon Unite, which they continue to organise tournaments for.
For Smash Bros in particular, they partnered with an e-sports company called Panda Global to officially sanction a circuit last year.
However, their awful track record with e-sports comes from mercilessly shutting down events they are not involved with (even when the organisers have reached out to Nintendo in good faith to discuss their involvment). They even go out of their way to dish out cease-and-desists at the last minute so that organisers don't have time to consider their legal options and rights before going ahead with the event.
There was a big scandal last year when Nintendo were having positive discussions about a partnership with a circuit called Smash World Tour then turned around and proceeded to threaten them just as the end of year finals were about to take place, forcing them to cancel an event that had been over a year in the making, and involving many professional players, hired staff and a lot of money (they could have just let them continue without being involved).
And just as a clarification, almost all these Smash events are not organised for profit by your big bad e-sports companies. Due to Nintendo's actions they have been mostly organically grown community-led efforts, all they want to do at the end of the day is have fun and play the game together.
Nintendo have shown time and again they will abuse their status as a big corporate entity to destroy harmless fan activity if they are not happy about it for any reason.
So just because you have a disdain for something in particular, you shouldn't project that onto a situation and use it as a false explanation for what's happening.
I think you absolutely have hit the nail on the head in your arguments here.
E-sports leagues want the tool to be consistent across the years, and want to make sure their top players are able to maintain their elite status for the headlines and press they get. Games that cater to e-sports leagues tend to be come very much about power players; fun is secondary to winning.
That is incompatible with a company that seems to want to make fun things for a family to play, like Nintendo.
Copyright striking everything is one issue, but not wanting to bend over backwards for e-sports is a different thing entirely; and I think it makes sense for a massive company like Nintendo.
The sister-comment to yours by user fat-chunk describes it much better, but we're not even talking about big commercial events and corporate entities. We're talking about community events run for fun, rather than profit. But even then, the point is that if they don't want to cater to these communities they can simply ignore any requests and not engage whatsoever.
You say they needn't "bend over backwards for e-sports" but that's not what's happening. Maybe players would prefer the consistency you describe, maybe they even ask for it ... but more than anything they just want the ability to play. As it stands Nintendo are being pretty petty and are bending over backwards to fuck with them, when they could instead just ... not.
> That is incompatible with a company that seems to want to make fun things for a family to play, like Nintendo.
Yes, because sibling rivalry and intense competition among family simply never happens. It's always just a fun time where everybody is a winner. Except for the fact that games like Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Wii Sports, etc will literally call out the winners and the losers of the tournament/match/game.
This argument makes no sense whatsoever. Plenty of people like to play Football, Baseball, Basketball, insert sport here for fun. That doesn't change the fact that there are paid professional leagues that take it to the next level. And the reason the professionals get paid is because other people, even sometimes those casual players, enjoy watching professionals play their favorite game at a superb level of skill.
> Copyright striking everything is one issue, but not wanting to bend over backwards for e-sports is a different thing entirely;
You and OP keep saying this. Please tell me what restrictions e-Sports players are trying to place on Nintendo? In this specific instance, SWT was literally playing one game that is 22 years old and that Nintendo does not even sell anymore (afaict you can't purchase Smash Melee from Nintendo). The other game was released 5 years ago, and the e-Sports scene wasn't demanding that Nintendo stop making updates or something afaik.
And, just as an aside, I don't give a crap about e-Sports. But the e-Sports scene certainly hasn't detracted from my enjoyment of playing smash with my brothers for fun and for competitive fun.
Yes this is what's so bizarre! You and I are disconnected from that scene altogether (I don't even like Smash!), we don't have any vested interests and yet we can both see that it's really weird behaviour from Nintendo. We can only guess what's going on, tbh it's such a spectacularly wealthy company they can get up to plenty of dumb things without ever really noticing the impact on their bottom line.
You're talking about the company that sold Mario Maker to six year olds, then deleted the games they created without warning or explanation. The only thing parents remember about that ** was the crying. That was the end of Nintendo anything in our house.
I'll exit this conversation, but if you click the link, you'll see that the title is "Nintendo Is Deleting People's Mario Maker Stages Without Telling Them Why".
The summary paragraph says, "Ultimately, the lack of communication is what’s frustrating. If Nintendo wants to have strict policies, that’s fine, but let creators know what they’re dealing with, so they can work around it. Not everyone has a million Twitter followers they can easily share a level with, so it’s unfortunate that some well-made stages may be permanently gone simply because they got lost in the noise."
If you have a beef with the article, you'll have to contact the author.
Yes, I read the article that literally opens by saying Nintendo warned players it may delete levels for being unpopular.
I am talking to you because after you answered my first question, I assumed that you had personal experience with your children being upset to the point of tears because they thought that they could no longer play some levels they made that had been deleted from Nintendo's servers. Was this assumption correct?
> The most prominent of these creators will now be very wary of posting content about the upcoming Zelda Tears of the Kingdom game which will most certainly hurt initial sales of the game.
Eh, that _might_ hurt initial sales of the game.
Or it might promote sales of the game, given that prominent video game streamers won't be streaming it, so it'll be more difficult to "play" the game by watching someone else play it. I know that I've not purchased many games that I otherwise would have (and would have had a good time with) because I watched someone's recorded gameplay video.
> I know that I've not purchased many games that I otherwise would have
I, on the other hand, never purchase a game without watching gameplay footage, and have bought games I've watched people play, that I ended up never playing, or playing for only a couple of hours.
> I, on the other hand, never purchase a game without watching gameplay footage...
Good promotional materials provide lots of gameplay footage, and Nintendo's definitely a company that I'd trust to not misrepresent the nature of their games and toys in the promotional materials.
Regardless, I'm quite aware that there are variety of folks out there with a variety of purchasing habits. I was responding in large part to the absolutist, histrionic statements made by the OP:
> It is putting the livelihoods of those content creators in danger ... I feel like this is yet another example of a large company acting in a way that hurts both their customers and themselves. I don't think it costs them anything to allow the creators to make that kind of content; rather it will make people more aware of their games[.] [These actions] will most certainly hurt initial sales of the game.
(It's almost as if OP isn't aware that Nintendo, the Nintendo Switch, and Zelda are -among households that play video games- household names, and that Nintendo has a _substantially capable_ marketing and audience surveying department.)
> (It's almost as if OP isn't aware that Nintendo, the Nintendo Switch, and Zelda are -among households that play video games- household names, and that Nintendo has a _substantially capable_ marketing and audience surveying department.)
I concur that 1) we can't say for sure what effect it would have on sales if prominent content creators did not cover the game, and 2) even if there's a negative impact on sales, it could be negligibly small.
However, I'm still convinced that having big content creators cover your new game release would not hurt sales, and I'm also convinced that Nintendo has nothing to gain from these actions in terms of money or reputation. Even if it only ever reaches a small minority of people right now, I believe that they are damaging their reputation and lose trust, not only with content creators, but with the players as well. And that's just sad.
> ...I believe that they are damaging their reputation and lose trust, not only with content creators,
Twitch streamers can generally go pound sand. Most of the professional streamers that I'm aware of are all cut from just about the same mold... and I _get it_ -- most of them are running a business that depends on establishing and maintaining parasocial relationships with a ton of people... but just because a business makes money doesn't mean that it's a good business to have in operation.
> ...but with the players as well.
If there's one thing I've learned in my many, many decades stomping around, it's that it's impossible to please everyone... and if you try to, you'll almost certainly never produce something that's worth people's attention.
Nintendo and Zelda are household names. The Switch is good hardware, and -historically- Zelda games are good games. The number of folks who would have purchased the game, but didn't because their favorite streamer(s) didn't play it on-camera is guaranteed to be insignificant in the first year, and drop to effectively zero as the years wear on.
Nintendo is massively profitable, and has been doing this sort of thing (both toy production and exercising substantial control over the public performance of the same) for _ages_. They're certainly not going to lose anything significant by doing this, because -historically- they haven't lost anything significant by doing this.
> The number of folks who would have purchased the game, but didn't because their favorite streamer(s) didn't play it on-camera is guaranteed to be insignificant in the first year, and drop to effectively zero as the years wear on.
This seems completely and obviously wrong to me.
As long as Nintendo spends even a cent on ads (they DO spend in fact more than 500M USD/year on marketing), it is very obvious that media presence has a very significant, non-zero effect on their sales.
Is one view on a youtube stream for breath of the wild worth as much to them as an average ad-impression they paid for? Probably not. But it's MOST CERTAINLY not worth 0. Thats just not how advertising works, and pushing that argument seems misleading and dishonest to me.
People don't even need to CONSUME the content-- just having it pop up on some feed might be enough to sway 1/10000 towards buying a Nintendo game the next time they're bored. Or need a gift.
I remember showing Zelda BotW to my nephew. We played it a few hours and even though he had fun with it, he had no interest in playing or buying it for himself. Then one of his favorite streamers picked it up on their channel and now he's running around with Zelda hoodies, spent several hundred hours in-game and is desperately awaiting the new Zelda release.
So yeah, I agree, and I have absolutely no idea how people are still underestimating the influence those streamers have (especially on teenagers).
> Nintendo has been issuing copyright strikes against content creators that use gameplay footage of their games, even though it is clearly allowed by their Content Guidelines
Would everyone please stop pretending like a company's "content guidelines" can enforce any restrictions on fair use purposes?
Making a cosplay costume of a character is fair use.
Making a video of you playing a game is fair use.
Fan art about a video game is fair use.
'Content guidelines' pretend to "give" you rights you already have, and then threaten to take them away if you do thinks they don't like.
> It is putting the livelihoods of those content creators in danger.
If Nintendo has shown to be hostile towards their own userbase, then really the only complaints should be about existing content. If creators keep paying for Nintendo games and content now that they've seen how they act, then the creators bear a substantial amount of blame going forward.
I guess you have a point, but I personally wouldn't blame creators for sticking with Nintendo games if that's the primary thing they're doing and moving away from Nintendo would mean completely reinventing their business.
It's like telling Apple developers who complain about Apple's bad developer relations to move to a different platform. I don't blame developers (or users) for these issues because I completely understand not wanting to transition your whole life and career to a different platform that you might enjoy less.
> if that's the primary thing they're doing and moving away from Nintendo would mean completely reinventing their business.
Isn’t that just part of the risk you accept by doing that kind of job? Every job has some risks attached to it and this is not unusual behavior for Nintendo.
It is putting the livelihoods of those content creators in danger. Apparently the creator in question (PointCrow) hasn't heard anything back from Nintendo after contacting them about the issue.
I feel like this is yet another example of a large company acting in a way that hurts both their customers and themselves. I don't think it costs them anything to allow the creators to make that kind of content; rather it will make people more aware of their games, potentially increasing sales. The most prominent of these creators will now be very wary of posting content about the upcoming Zelda Tears of the Kingdom game which will most certainly hurt initial sales of the game.