Game Publishers Vow To Help YouTubers

Big game publishers have promised to help YouTube users after a new automated anti-theft system from Google ran amok. Thousands of “Lets Play” YouTube videos from small to big personalities on YouTube have been flagged as breaching copyright which for the big popular channels is blocking payments from adverts displayed on these videos. Public outrage from “Lets Play” YouTube Channel operators such as TheRadBrad how has nearly 2 million subscribers and TetraNinja how has some 500,00 subscribers has promoted a response from game publishers who had not willingly instigated the clampdown.

Ubisoft, Capcom, Blizzard, Deep Silver and other game publishers have pledged to help YouTubers whose videos contained gameplay from their games to clear the notices of copyright and regain control of advertising on their channels and videos. The term “LetsPlay” refers to video screen recordings of games being played often with comedic/humorous or analytical commentary from the players and have become increasingly popular over the past couple of years. Weather this is due to the factor of viewers being able to get help with the game they are playing or viewers just enjoying the commentary, these “LetPlay” videos have taken YouTube by storm. To put it in perspective a “LetsPlay” up-loader by the name of “PewDiePie” recently saw his collection of gaming videos top 50 million views making them more popular YouTube trumping both South Korean pop sensation Psy and boy band One Direction. However the automated system introduced by Google to police copyrighted material posted illicitly on YouTube marked some game videos as breaching the site’s terms and in the process blocked money from the adverts placed on their videos and marked it instead for copyright owners.

Google’s new system which specifically scans channels identified as affiliates of YouTube’s multi-channel networks initiative, which are those users who have accepted agreements with Google and can make money from advertising on their videos.

A YouTube spokesperson went onto say; “We recently enabled Content ID scanning on channels identified as affiliates of Multi-Channel Networks, This has resulted in new copyright claims for some users based on the policies set by the relevant content owners”.

A Blizzard representative took to Twitter using the Official StarCraft account to inform “LetsPlay” up-loaders that it was not behind the copyright claims and that it will quickly approve and remove strikes on affected videos. Ubisoft has also gone onto say that it will clear any wrongly issued copyright claims within 24 hours.

“If you happen to get hit with claims on any of your Ubisoft content, it may be that some of the audio is being auto-matched against the music catalogue on our digital stores. It might show up as being claimed by our distributor ‘idol’. In such cases please take the following steps and we get it cleared for you. 1, Leave the video live for now. 2, send us the URL of the affected video and let us know who flagged it. 3, We’ll get it cleared hopefully the same day.”

Despite the support pledged by some game publishers, the legal issues surrounding the copyright claims are still murky, because the content on display in these “LetsPlay” videos are owned by the creators in this case being the game publishers. It’s unclear the impact that these copyright strikes will have on the YouTube’s “LetsPlay’ community, many of whom rely on monetisation of their videos on YouTube through adverts for income.

Thank you The Guardian for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of Segment Next.