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Comment by alexandre_m | Hacker News Reader

This whole industry of game streaming is operating in a gray zone.

It's a matter of time before we see some big lawsuits against the streamer and streaming platforms which make a lot of money by publishing the whole content, without any royalties to game developers /publishers.

For certain games. it doesn't spoil or ruin the fun factor for viewers, but some others it just removed the incentives to buy a copy of the game in the first place.

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If that does happen it will be unprecedented. Activision and Bungie, which own Destiny, frequently works with streamers to premiere new content and hold events and they are not alone. They seem to know that streamers are good for business.

nintendo? not exactly unprecedented.

Nintendo has an antiquated grasp of business though and will go under even sooner if they continue with this type of behaviour. They are currently fueled on goodwill and nostalgia value. A complete outlier in that aspect.

Maybe, but that still means it's not unprecedented

Twitch already actively complies with publishers on this, and does things like blocking games before the street release date.

If the publisher doesn't want their game on twitch it isn't there: but the reverse tends to happen (publishers pay people to stream their game, and for their game to be featured on the twitch sidebar).

Why do you think content owners would see this as IP theft rather than free advertising? Are people watching play throughs rather than playing it themselves?

It heavily depends on the game. There are lots of single-player games where the story is much better than the actual game mechanics. Or where watching somebody figure out all the puzzles is more fun than doing it yourself. Here, streamers and let's-players likely cause a decrease in game sales. In simulation and competitive games on the other hand streamers should usually cause more sales then they prevent.

As one less recent example, watching Half Life 2 with funny commentary is great, but I have no desire to ever play the game myself.

Relevant article on a game developer that did not approve of streaming their game: http://www.thatdragoncancer.com/thatdragoncancer/2016/3/24/o...

Even if publishers decided to take a hard line on this I don't think it is too big a deal for Twitch. The majority of their viewership is in esports events and the games that are played as esports.

Well that just means that developers will start focusing less on story and more on mechanics. In a way, streaming will change what developers focus on when making their games in order to adapt.

At least some are. I myself watched a playthrough of "Last of Us" and greatly enjoyed it. But because the game is so linear and story-driven, and the gameplay itself doesn't look particularly remarkable, I'll likely never pick up the game, even though considerable resources were obviously expended for voice acting and writing and direction.

Depends on the game. Many games are only remarkable for their combination of story and aesthetics, with the minute-to-minute play being fairly mundane. In that case I can see a bunch of people just watching a stream and not bothering to play the game themselves.

How many of them would have been so pushed as to play the game for themselves anyway... an open question.

Games like "The Last of Us" and "Uncharted 4" definitely seem more like audience-participation movies. The fight scenes might be fun to play through, but a lot of the good stuff comes from the scenery, the story, and the acting - both voice and capture.

I watched Let's Plays of both because I wanted to see the story, and because the players were entertaining. I don't think I'd have enough time or patience to play through either game, but I definitely got value out of the game itself without having played it.

It does seem like a gray zone - I experienced content without paying for it, but I didn't experience it the way it was truly meant to be. Did I come by it unfairly?

That's going to be interesting litigation. There's a legal analysis under UK law here.[1] It's not too helpful. WIPO suggests that legislation may be desirable to give game developers control over videos of games.[2] Their country-by-country analysis is all over the place.

It's a tough call. Arguably, the player is the performance, against the game as a backdrop. That could be argued as a transformative use. If you make a video of someone playing golf on a Robert Trent Jones golf course, Robert Trent Jones (or his estate) doesn't get royalties. If you make videos of people playing sports with sports gear with prominent logos, that doesn't mean the sports gear company has a copyright interest. You don't have to pay royalties to car companies when their cars appear in a video.

Cut scenes may be an issue, since the player isn't controlling them.

[1] http://www.develop-online.net/analysis/uploading-gameplay-co... [2] http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/copyright/en/creative_i...

> Arguably, the player is the performance, against the game as a backdrop. That could be argued as a transformative use.

I'd say that's absolutely the case for a lot of the most popular streamers and Lets Players. Jacksepticeye is an easy example: the distinctive parts of his videos aren't the games, they're his exaggerated reactions to whatever's going on in them. You could replace the actual game video and sound with a black screen, leaving just his voice, and people would still tune in to giggle at his silly behavior.

Are there any good streamers who play games without unnecessary commentary? There's nothing that annoys me more than someone ruining the mood by starting to talk shit in a middle of an important plot point or emotional scene.

Game developers are fine with streaming/youtube. They see it as advertising. These days it's common for streamers and youtubers to be sponsored by major developers. Nintendo is the only company that tried to stop it and they backed off after a major backlash.

The most popular games on Twitch are not story driven though.

That would make sense, because for a game to be popular it would have to have a consistent viewership; something you wouldn't have with a single playthrough story based game. I think that story based games are very popular in the short term when they come out, but then die off (because most streamers have played them before their audiences). I think OP's point is valid.

My comment wasn't only targeting Twitch, nor only live streaming.

Just take for example all those YouTube channels where you can access a replay of a whole game on demand.

I just did a couple of weeks ago with the latest Resident Evil HD remaster because I was fond of this game I played back in 1996.

I thought about buying a copy. I wanted to revisit it. Well not anymore. I just skipped through the important cinematics and storyline for some hours, up to the game ending.

For me its the opposite. I watch the start of a playthough and if I find it interesting, then I get the game, when otherwise I would not have given it a try.

I think that game companies are more thrilled about free advertising to people like me then they are worried about people like you... at least for now. If that balance shifts, things might get ugly.

It's not an all or nothing situation, far from it.

Platforms like Twitch definitely help to hype new games and make good free advertising. Most companies should leverage this. For someone who works in the video game industry, I do see the value in that.

On the other hand, it can be harmful for certain types of games (linear/story driven, like pointed out).

Not only that, but I think the way the revenues from those streams are shared is very unfair.

Think about it; this market is growing and the pie is getting bigger. Yet, right now the money is split only between the platform service and the streamer, either by advertising or donations, but without anything to the IP owner.

Movie and music organisations like MPAA and RIAA have taken very agressive stance against digital copyright infringement since the millenium.

Video game industry has been more forgivable so far, but doesn't mean it won't take a stand eventually.

I think you probably did not watch gaming videos a lot. So far the streaming are vides are an integral part of the gaming industry.

I read an interview with an indie studio talking about streamers, and in the end they appreciated their presence but resented when the streamers revealed too much of the entire game or did not add enough of their own content. (I think it was the Stanley Parable?)

Well, stanley parable is basically reading a book. Sure you move through the level, but once you see it, you've basically seen it. I personally have bought multiple games because I see streamers playing them (Dead by Daylight is my most recent).

Then perhaps it will become necessary to design games for replayability, rather than on-rails linear stories. Games != movies. I don't see that as a bad development.

For some that would be a sad development. Certain able gamers depend upon a sliding scale of difficulty, and at the lower end it could be a slightly interactive movie like experience. Casual players too may prefer a simpler and story focused experience. Requiring a lot of branching and variation may limit story depth.

That's no different where Twitch streamers upload their entire play through a chunk at a time onto Youtube.

Correct, and Nintendo already puts the lockdown on that hardcore.

Since when? I've never had a problem finding Mario play throughs.

EDIT: Just did a sanity check search, Mario Kart 8 playthrough, been up for 2 years, a million and a half views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR0l84gjEXg

Since quite a while, Nintendo either takes down videos or claims ad revenue for the videos via the Youtube DMCA.

Last year Nintendo made a program[1] where Youtubers could sign up to be Nintendo partners, and in return they could keep somewhere around ~70% of the video ad revenue, but they also had some weird clauses.

Most people who do Nintendo game content do so while knowing that they are not going to be able to make ad revenue off of it. That is very well and fine for people who do it as a hobby, but some others do Youtube content for a living, and it's nonviable for them.

I don't have a particularly strong opinion on the subject, just wanted to let you know that it _is_ a thing.

[1] https://r.ncp.nintendo.net/guide/

News today.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/09/nintendos-dmca-backed-...

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