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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoIL5qUI1p8

^ A five minute video explaining that, if you care about any YouTube channel that depends on fair use, you have a limited amount of time to let the government know "hey, content creators are getting abused, the videos I want to watch are being taken down, and things need to change."

If you don't understand the issue or want to get the opinion of other channels, the same guy posted a video from him and other content creators discussing the problem. Markiplier also did a post about in on FB if I'm not mistaken. (Personally, I like Jontron, Markiplier, Rooster teeth, Game Theory, exc, but regardless of your preferences, this is affecting--not just them--but anyone else who posts videos online.)

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of a people who will make let's plays again!
When the beating of your heart
Matches the angry keyboard taps
You probably have serious problems, go to Takedownabuse.org and do battle with Dr. Money before you seize up and go into cardiac arrest.

I'm pretty sure if things got on a riot level scale, these youtubers would take a bigger stand or maybe even legal action as their live hood depended on it. I'm just not as youtube rebellious as I was back in 2014. No one really did much then and let of ride by.

Many youtubers have been forced to make videos discussing the issues because they cannot talk to an actual person about it. People are taking a stand. I'm sure some have tried to take legal action at some point. It's just very risky since Google is a HUGE company, and can probably afford the world's best lawyers.

Yeah. NC has been trying for a long time to get someone, anybody to actually talk to him, but all communication--especially reports / takedowns--has been automated. The system is insanely broken and unmoderated.

Youtube has been broken like this for a couple months now. Only few youtubers have actually been able to make a stand and get the attention of the CEO, like GradeAunderA and the nostalgia critic. It's fucking bullshit that people who are actually violating the fair use are getting away with it constantly. Reaction channels for example. Hope that this will make google finally open their fucking eyes for once. 

Heard too many discussions about it from various podcasts...can't say I really care as much as I did before.

I thought this was going to be about defending LPs as fair use and content creation, so I came in here to eviscerate you, but then I watched the video and it's actually about false DMCA takedown notices. I suppose you can live.

You hush. LPs are great, and free advertising.

Axiom, is it a weird feeling, always being so wrong about games?

Holy crap, do not get me started, lady. Whether you personally enjoy LPs or not, they have no legal grounds to stand on and are very damaging to certain kinds of games, like narrative-oriented ones.

I'm just gonna leave this here.

http://www.thatdragoncancer.com/thatdragoncancer/2016/3/24/on-lets-plays

Yeah but you can't blame them for everything, every person watching an LP does not represent a lost sale. There's always going to be people watching them who were never going to buy or play the game in the first place.

All I can do is speak for myself personally in saying that something like half the games I've purchased in the last six years have been ones I'd never even heard of until someone did the LP. I usually don't even play the things, because so much of the time the actual gameplay is just so much tedious bullshit I don't want to deal with, but the story was unique enough I want to support it and vote with my credit card for more like it. And I'm not the only one, I've seen situations where by the end of the thread the LPer's made the developer a lot of sales from people who would never have given the game a second glance otherwise. Nier and the Drakengard games and Deadly Premonition being major ones I remember right off, (with the Nier and Deadly Premonition devs being supportive over Twitter when the threads were linked) but smaller indie stuff like Long Live the Queen, too.

(And yes I know people can claim they bought a game too, but again just speaking for myself, I'll do it pretty often, and people would constantly drop out of the thread that was getting weekly updates because they'd played up to the point the LP was at and wanted to finish the rest without spoilers...)

Anyway so to sum up, you're bad and wrong, get off my forum and go back to writing about alcholic wizard ladies with guns.

This is almost verbatim the argument used to defend piracy. Yes, of course not every LP view is a lost sale, and sure, it's hard to directly measure just how big the negative impact is. But the fact of the matter is that when you put the entire meaningful content of a work up for free, the people who consume it now have zero motivation to pay for it beyond the goodness of their hearts, which is a very poor incentive.

I don't have a problem with the idea of LPs. They're absolutely great for certain kinds of games. But the legal and ethical right to determine whether people should LP a specific game belongs to the game's developer, not LPers, despite all the self-entitled blubbering people like to sling around about this subject.

(Also, today I'm actually making 3D environments for a different game, but I wish I were writing instead. :[ Actually wait no, I hate writing, this is better.)

Well, to defend mizal on this one, some LPers are actually quite beneficial to game publicity. People like Cryaotic or Markiplier have played some pretty cool games, most of which don't totally ruin the experience for people who want the game. Like, for example, the game "60 seconds" is a nuclear fallout shelter simulator type game. No two playthroughs are alike. So just because Markiplier played like, what, 5 "episodes" of the game, it doesn't mean I don't want to play it anymore. And, I'll admit, some games are entirely story driven and one playthrough will completely ruin the experience of playing through it yourself (Undertale, for one). But that doesn't necessarily mean that I won't lik the game afterwards and want to play it for myself.

Now, on the other hand (to defend your opinion), some LPers are just about criticizing games. Some do it with games that are obviously pretty bad (JonTron <3). But others do it wih current games that may or may not still be in development, or more recent games that were labeled as "bad" previously, giving bad publicity to said game (Tomato Gaming). I agree that the second reason is pretty bad, as it can give a bad rep for a game that's in progress, or point out all the flaws in a certain game. That's a dick move, in my opinion.

Right, LPs are good publicity for certain kinds of games. Things that are multiplayer, procedurally generated, or otherwise never the same twice are a shoe-in. Linear, narrative-based games are a totally different story, though. I mean, sure, watching an LP of one of these doesn't necessarily mean you absolutely won't go on to buy the game yourself, just like downloading the game illegally doesn't mean you absolutely won't go on to buy it. But are you going to defend piracy? It's the same thing. You're receiving the content without paying for it.

It doesn't really matter how big an impact you think LPs have on the sales of games, though. People don't have the right to make them, and you don't have the right to watch them. Reproducing the entire content of a work isn't covered under fair use. That doesn't mean they're always unethical (again, I think they're fine for some games), but it does mean that people need to accept that the developer has the right to decide whether their games can be LPed or not.

LPs, especially LPs of narrative-based games, are like if you recorded yourself watching a movie and posted it on Youtube. No one would defend that as legal or acceptable, right? In fact, we have a great example for how that's not legal: RiffTrax. They sell their movie commentaries separately from the movies for a reason. If it's not okay for movies, why do people think it's okay for games?

Also, my point has nothing to do with LPers criticizing games (although that's also an interesting discussion). My point has to do with copyright infringement. It's especially bad for indies making linear, narrative-based games, like the article I linked to a few posts up. There's no difference between doing a Let's Play of Dear Esther, Gone Home, or That Dragon, Cancer and doing a Let's Watch of a movie.

You're right. It's not a right. It's a privilege. If the people who make the game REALLY have a problem with the video, be it an indie or Triple A developer, why aren't they actively trying to stop these types of videos from posting on Youtube? Besides from that one article you've posted above, I've never heard of a dev complaining about these types of videos.

I believe that since you've bought the item, you can do whatever the hell you want with it (Unless, you know, you use it to harm someone. Like a gun. Or a knife. I kind of prefer not to get shanked or shot). I don't think it really matters what you do with it. You could share it. You could show it off. Whatever you feel. The developer sold their rights to the game's possible uses along with the game.

It's not really a movie, per se. It's interactive. The LPer is just showing their experience with it. I think that's acceptable. Movies aren't interactive (... yet).

It does have to do with the publicity, else there wouldn't be "complaints" in the first place.

Oh, and by the way.

"I mean, sure, watching an LP of one of these doesn't necessarily mean you absolutely won't go on to buy the game yourself, just like downloading the game illegally doesn't mean you absolutely won't go on to buy it. But are you going to defend piracy?"

Yes.

Just wanted to let you know that.

But if you want to talk about that, we can d this somewhere else. Like PMs.

I've heard of lots of devs complaining about LPs, even for titles as big as Life is Strange. I'm a developer and talk a lot to other developers, though, so my experience may be different from yours. I think the reason there aren't more indies talking about this in public is because they're afraid of the backlash. I mean, look at that article. It seems obvious to me that the guy is deeply unhappy about people LPing his game but is caving to public pressure because he doesn't want to deal with the harassment he'll get if he goes around issuing DMCA takedown notices.

Anyway, the value that comes from a story-based game isn't the player's interaction with it, it's the content the developer put into the game. There's a huge difference between Dear Esther and Minecraft. The latter is a tool for self-expression, and the former is a walking simulator where you go experience a premade plot with little agency on your part. It's essentially the same as a movie. I really don't get the argument that because you can interact with them a little bit, it's suddenly okay, because it's not like the essential experience (seeing and understanding the plot) is going to change when you play it yourself versus watching someone else playing it.

As for being able to do what you want with something you buy, I agree for physical items, but intellectual property is very different. I get the feeling we're not going to come to a consensus about this, though, especially if you support piracy. We can agree to disagree. I think I've said basically everything I have to say on this subject anyway.

The day that Indie devs suddenly rise up against LPs will be a cold day in hell, I agree. But it shouldn't be because it's they're afraid of what people will think, it should be because it's not the right thing to do. People should be able to do what they want with their property, without fear of censorship or copyright laws.

The point I was trying to get across is that if someone makes a video of a game, it should be fine because it's THEM, the person who BOUGHT the game, playing through it. A different experience, letting out their thoughts through commentary. The viewer, a.k.a someone who DIDN'T pay for the game, doesn't have the luxury of interacting with it. But since the LPer, out of the kindness of their heart (or possibly wallet, with Youtube partnerships and whatnot) posted a video of their individual experience, it's suddenly not ok.

As for Intellectual Property, what about Disney? They got tons of that shit, and do whatever the fuck they want with it, and that's fine. Because they paid for it. I mean, look at the latest Star Wars!

Personally, you can believe whatever you want. I won't judge you. I will agree with your proposition to disagree.

What's so wrong with "Piracy" anyway? It's basically just mass sharing.

Well, sure, in an ideal world, that'd be cool. Unfortunately, we live in a capitalist society where people cannot survive without money and people who do work need to be paid for that work. If you want games to exist, especially indie games, then you cannot reproduce those games for free. I don't know if you know how hard it is to make a living as an indie developer, but it's extremely hard, and this doesn't help.

Eh, I'll concede her point that LPs may be great for some types of games, but poison for others.

I absolutely love LPs, but I'll admit that's primarily because I have zero interest in 'interacting' with certain types of games at all. A good time for one gamer is a time-consuming slog for another. I'm there for the plot, or maybe the plot is all there is (plenty of people do LPs of Choice games, and Visual Novels are in the same boat...) and once it's over I'm satisfied, will admit that it was a great game but have no longer have any need to purchase and play it myself.

I mean, a lot of times I'll buy it anyway, but honestly, the attitude of dgaf among most gamers is probably more widespread that I realize. I watch most LPs from the Something Awful forum, people are always being encouraged to buy the games and admitting to pirating one will get you banned.

I'm not sure what your points about 'people should be able to do whatever they want with their property' are getting at, tbh. Disney has to get their movies taken down from Youtube constantly, and you have to see the difference between showing a movie to a few friends vs showing it to hundreds or thousands of people? Even legally, yes, there is a difference.

I don't know, I can see both sides of this but I have a feeling if you'd spent years making a game, writing a book or whatever and relied on sales for a significant part of your income, or even just to break even making back money you'd spent on development, you wouldn't be so strongly supportive of the idea of only making one sale when you might have made a hundred.  

Maybe I'm not the best one to have this argument because I love LPs, but I'm also very much in the camp 'if you like what you saw then just buy the damn thing, you have no fucking excuse!' Most indie games are like $5, $10, $15 dollars, tops. ffs.  

Eeeeeh... I guess I can see your point.

I, personally, NEVER pirate from Indie Devs (I learned my lesson from Game Dev Tycoon ;~;). They need to the money. This is probably their only source of income. I can't say for anyone else, though.

The thing with Disney is that they do whatever they want with companies because they bought them. They could literally do anything with them and nobody could do anything about it. Disney could make Kermit the Frog appear in Episode 11 of Star Wars because they own both of them. Basically what I was saying was "Your stuff. Do whatever you want." You could buy a car just for taking it to the drive-in to have sex. You could buy a boat just for sailing to Bermuda while having sex. You could buy an airplane just to have intercontinental orgies. Why am I making sex analogies? ANYWAY, I believe that if you buy something, you could do whatever you please with it. Which is true, in a sense.

Am I still making sense? I'm tired.

Yeah, hmm. That...that post got interesting. I hope to God you never buy a dog... :P

I don't consider pets as property... wait... EW!

I've played a metric shit-tonne of game, and only maybe a dozen, two dozen LPs. Why? Cause a good LP, adds to the experience. Freemans Mind, is an excellent example, as well as Princess Maker 2. In the first, as if Gordon is a egomaniacal sociopath. The second, as if the Narrator is Gendo Ikari. Both added to the game, a unique twist and slant, and ideas - Gordon thinking he stumbled into a Lovecraft story, and Gendo buying Big Boob Pills .... for himself.

If it had simply been watching some idiot play the game, with nothing added, and spoiling all the  surprises, I'd remember them far less. Planescape Torment, or Knights of the Old Republic, would probably have not been bought if I got the reveals and scenes posted as simple youtube clips. I've played Succession games of DF with mates, again because it added so much, as did their narratives about it (and also sighing sadly at all the 'decisions' my forebears made, and wondering what the hell they were thinking).

So, in short, a LP is like gamer TV, with MST3K trappings - it loves the game, and expands it. If it was just a camera recording the play, with occasional grunts and "That's what she said!" at the 'wittiest' moments, then that's just stealing any enthusiasm I had for the product away. I have purchased games from good LPS, I plan on doing an LP of a recently released game in a few months, simply so as not to tread on their toes, and I am happy to say I pay for things I value, and value the things I spend time on enough, to spend money on. It's a simple, nicely circular train of logic.

INdies need love, word of mouth and to be treated fairly. AAA, well. Most of them are dogshit anyway, and the masses can do what they like to them. Not exactly going to surprise and shock, showcasing the latest COD, Madden, Halo, whatever.

My humble opinion, as a gamer with eclectic and ranging tastes.

If you pirate from an indie dev you're scum, just fyi.

I remain apathetic about Triple A games.

Nah, they need the money.

ROMs, however...

If the people who make the game REALLY have a problem with the video, be it an indie or Triple A developer, why aren't they actively trying to stop these types of videos from posting on Youtube? Besides from that one article you've posted above, I've never heard of a dev complaining about these types of videos.

Well to be fair to Axiom's point, Triple A devs may simply not care because they're selling so many copies either way, but an indie one who does might be legitimately afraid to speak up. Indie devs tend to get much more involved with their community on a personal level, and sure this helps build up loyalty and word of mouth for a game, but the extremely obsessive, self-entitled types every community attracts are also really damn fickle and will turn on them like rabid dogs if they suddenly hear something they don't like.

And I mean, aside from a backlash from a loss of sales, game developers have received death threats, had their families threatened, had their personal info spread all over the internet and had freaking SWAT teams sent to their house in the middle of the night by for far, far less than doing something as controversial as saying they won't allow LPs.

Many gamers are fucking crazy feel passionately about certain things to the point of losing sight of all reason, is what I'm trying to say.

Yes, exactly this. Developer harassment is very real and very scary.

Hey fuck you I was trying to fix a typo. :[

:))))))))))

Most of the examples I gave probably weren't the best ones, not the most popular games but not indie by a long shot, they were just ones that I'd been watching LPs of entirely for the narrative. The actual gameplay part of all of them had zero appeal to me and a guy doing a 100% run only underlined the fact that holy shit, this is not a thing I ever could put up with, so for me purchasing was basically a case of 'well that was cool and unique, good job, here's a $20 tip'.

I also bought a VN about pigeon dating once based on an LP, so that...proves some kind of point? :P

And it does get into kind of a weird fuzzy area at times when the LPer is arguably far more popular than the game they're LPing. Subscribers are there to hear their commentary, regardless of what they're playing...but only fuzzy as far as something to think about goes, as far as the legality of it, well sure, all the rights are pretty firmly on the side of the actual game creators, nothing to really argue about, there.

LPs are such an entrenched part of gaming culture now though it may just be one of those things devs have to either ignore or embrace. A lot of times popular LPers will get advance copies of games to show off (not to actually fully LP), so that's probably the best of both worlds there as far as new games go. An indie dev, especially, can't really afford to burn up massive amounts of good will and/or enrage their community by cracking down on LPs (and we all know what awful, awful people angry gamers can be...) even though they're likely the hurt the most by whatever percentage of sales they do lose. 

Though as for games that've been out awhile already, I can't see it as ever being worth bothering a lawyer about unless it was one of those situations where they absolutely had to defend their rights or else risk losing them later.

You make most of your sales right after release, so LPs later on aren't really a huge deal. And yeah, I agree that getting an LP from a popular LPer is a complicated situation. It's probably good if your game has substantial gameplay, but I also feel like indies should be able to make strongly plot-focused games if they want to without having to worry about LPs destroying their sales. I mean, it's already incredibly hard to stay afloat as an indie. I dislike the statement that it's too late and indies should just give up, but the backlash if you try to get your stuff taken down is vicious, yeah. It's just a bad situation all around.

I feel like the best solution is for the popular LPer to do an impressions video or a review rather than a full LP. That can act as a teaser/trailer to give people an idea of whether they'd like the game without removing any incentive for them to buy it.

Not like it's law what I'm saying but, gamers/lplers have opinions. Only the most hardcore viewers will be, "(Sips) is always correct on every opinion". Only 10% of the 1% [<3] will be like that so people take things different, no bad publicity. All publicity is good publicity, as they say. Different strokes for different folks, as they say. Their should be no problems with infringement. Is it illegal for news channels on T.v. to show games? I thought so. Why wouldn't publishers want their game noticed. Bad game = bad review. 

LPs aren't reviews. Is it illegal to use quotes from a book in a review? No. Is it illegal to quote the entire text of the book in a review? Yes.

There's a huge difference between showing short clips of something and showing the entire work.

First of all, not only did I say lpers but I said gamers. Your using videogames as a movie or book. The rules are different. What's the difference if I, physically went to their house (workplace) and watched, or I watched it online. Same experience different places.

Uh, the difference is the same as the difference between going to your friend's house to watch their DVD of The Godfather and ripping their DVD and uploading it to Youtube.

Movies and games have different properties (laws).

No, actually, they don't. Do you have a legal citation for that?

"In practice, games companies cannot easily control how footage of their games is used...But the footage is copyrighted and much of it is held on a YouTube database that can be searched by YouTube via a system called ContentID." -Ploygon 

1. Polygon isn't a legal resource.

2. That quote means nothing out of context.

3. Do you really want to get into this? It's becoming a little tiresome.

Saying Polygon isn't a reliable resource is your opinion, I won't shut down your Freedom of speech. Facts are facts, so yeah. 

Eh, he's right. You probably shouldn't use any of Gawker Media's sites. Even the sort of good ones (like Jalopnik) aren't that great anymore).

I'm a she, just fyi. Also, yeah, I was asking for a legal ruling, not an opinion posted on a gaming site.

It's mainly music which is illegal, little snippets of sound in the background. 

Using other people's art, music, intellectual property (and a game is a combination of all three) without permission is absolutely illegal, it's just one of those things that's so widespread it's usually allowed to go on because stopping it would be more trouble than it's worth.

The devs or companies have every right to slap a C&D on an LPer if they feel strongly enough about it, it's just that most of them don't bother.

Using other people's art, music, intellectual property (and a game is a combination of all three) without permission is absolutely illegal...

This is complete and utter bullshit. Fair use allows use of copyrighted material under the conditions of parody and commenatary/criticism, without needing permission from the copyright holder. If that wasn't the case, they'd be able to shut down anyone who publishes a negative reaction to a work (such as a movie or video game).

We're talking about using the entire thing though. A movie review isn't the entire two and a half hour movie uploaded on YouTube with the reviewer occasionally making a comment. That would be taken down.