Popular YouTubers Are Calling Out Nintendo For Their Streaming Policies

The YouTube-verse has been a turbulent one as of late, but even though the company is making moves to a more user-friendly platform – that doesn’t mean the dust has settled. At least this time the beef isn’t with YouTube themselves, instead the problem that many are having is with Nintendo. A lot of streamers and YouTubers are upset with the Big N over their stringent streaming policies of their content.

This isn’t the first time the company has been called out for their incredibly limiting streaming requirements, but it seems that the recent release of Super Mario Odyssey has taken that tension to an all new level.

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The controversy kicked back up again when popular YouTuber ‘VideoGaemDunkey’ took to his Twitter account to Tweet the below message blasting Nintendo for their copyright claim on his review (warning: language): 

Immediately his reply thread blew up in support stating that he should dispute the claim. This spurred even more conversation about the hot topic of streaming and coverage guidelines, but it’s just one of many. His Tweet wasn’t coming from a place of ignorance, however. Just recently he took to his podcast to talk about his issues with Nintendo where he stated he knew the video would be demonetized, yet he was going to upload it as is anyway. 

Other popular names added their support to his complaint citing similar instances and frustration for Nintendo’s polices: 

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We’ve previously detailed their strict restrictions on streams, which can be seen here, and the mandatory refunneling has been met with a lot of resistance. The term “fair use” has very little weight in terms of Nintendo content, and it’s non-existent on livestreams. For those streamers that would like to support Nintendo and stream their content, they find this move incredibly frustrating. Especially with the bigger names in the industry where streaming is a large part of their income. For those looking to run commentary on Nintendo properties, they must join the Nintendo’s Creators Club – which may not sound bad – but it does provide a huge problem for these names. 

This policy does complicate things for streamers as they are faced with a few less than favourable options:

• Possibly having to set up an all new channel, starting from scratch with followers (with registering the entire channel)
• Cancel the registration process with the Nintendo Creators Program, and register by video-to-video basis
  • This includes previously released videos of Nintendo content

A huge reason why streamers are avoiding the program is because of the dramatic restriction on profit. Polygon states it best: 

“Think of it this way: A YouTuber earns 60 percent of a cut from a normal YouTube video, with Google (YouTube’s parent company) taking 40 percent. As part of Nintendo’s Creators program, that same YouTuber is going to earn far less than normal as both Nintendo and Google each take a piece of the profit earned (70 percent for channels; 60 percent for videos). If YouTubers don’t join the program, they aren’t able to profit at all off the video, as all revenue from AdSense goes back to Nintendo.”

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Because of this, many YouTubers have fled to the streaming site Twitch. Twitch is the largest competitor to YouTube at the moment regarding streaming, and they have a much more lenient policy when it comes to content creation. 

Because of this mess, many might have better luck following their favourites on Twitch – at least when it comes to Nintendo titles like Super Mario Odyssey. So far, neither Nintendo nor YouTube has prepared a statement regarding the policy backlash or whether there are any plans to change it. 

Story developing …