I’m not sure if it’s still how they work it, but Nintendo rolled out a kind of partnership program for making videos with their content, where they basically claimed the ad earnings and gave you a cut. Nintendo still causes issues for plenty of YouTube channels as far as fair use goes.
There’s a guy named Jim Sterling who discovered that if 2 different companies claim the same video it basically ensures nobody gets paid, so if he uses Nintendo footage or music he makes sure to blatantly edit in some music or footage he knows will get claimed to purposely gum up the works so nobody gets paid. He runs his videos ad free thanks to a successful Patreon.
I’m pretty sure Angry Joe mentioned no longer having issues using Nintendo’s stuff in his vids, and uberhaxornova has been using nintendo games for years without issues now though he used to have problems too before
also have u guys even seen all the nintendo games being streamed on Twitch? if nintendo still had a problem with that this wouldn’t be happening either
dude Angry Joe used to get all his nintendo reviews taken down (in the end he even resorted to reviewing their games without showing any gameplay out of pure frustration), these past 2 years he’s been fine and very happy about it, and uberhaxornova just does gameplay
and these r just 2 examples, I’m subbed to plenty of youtubers and there used to be a huge problem with youtube with most of them just plainly avoiding them, but it rly seems like that is all in the past now; i rly dont see why u think there’s still a problem
u even find hundreds of complete let’s plays of Breath of the Wild and i think that makes it quite obvious
so having looked into it in a bit more detail, it seems that small(er) channels have problems cuz Nintendo made the requirements harder and you need such amount of viewers and video hours or whatever
interestingly, Twitch streamers dont have any problems at all and don’t lose any revenue at all, neither from streaming, nor from VODs, so it seems YouTube is at least partly to blame here cuz it seems Twitch is like “we don’t care, whatever” and apparently doesnt get in trouble for that but YouTube is all “Oh noes, we have to do what nintendo wants”
It also feels very much like Nintendo is not just doing this because they perceive it as a revenue loss either. They’ve always looked more to be acting out of spitefulness, if you do not pay them for the access to something you do not deserve to use it no matter what it is or how old or pointless it might be. Even if Nintendo does not deign to offer paid access to it. Like they would rather no one played their old games at all than that some did so without paying them tribute for it.
Which makes a certain level of sense if you’re providing a service or a physical product. Of course in that case any freeloader takes something, be it time or stock, that then can not be sold or billed for.
But in the case of old roms Nintendo lose nothing if someone downloads a copy of something to relive their childhood memories for a few hours.
Whilst I can understand, but not entirely agree with a fair few of the sentiments you express, this statement in particular sticks out to me. The DS was most assuredly not murdered by piracy. Yes, piracy was rife, but the best selling portable game system of all time was definitely not impacted in the way you imply. In fact it’s incredibly difficult to draw any kind of direct correlation between piracy and it’s effects.The PS2 for example, despite having less powerful hardware than it’s direct competitors, sold more, lasted longer and had incredible market penetration partly because of piracy. So it’s possible that piracy actually prolonged the lifespan of the DS.
Furthermore, numerous studies have ruled out the impact on piracy on game sales. Just a quick search reveals the research paper How Serious is Piracy in the Videogame Industry? which states in it’s abstract -
Downloading pirated videogames enables users of portable game machines to play downloaded videogames on a platform without purchasing the original versions. Based on a questionnaire survey, this study is the first to examine how familiar users of portable videogame machines are with downloading pirated videogames and how this affects whether they purchase genuine versions. The results show that although approximately 40% of surveyed users know how to download and play pirated videogames for free, most of them do not actually download pirated versions. Furthermore, no significantly negative relationship can be found between downloading pirated videogames and purchasing the original versions.
Nintendo has a history of aggressive anti consumer tactics. Whilst this isn’t anti-consumer, the perpetuation of these sites is incredibly likely to be having no impact upon them at all…most people these days simply won’t go the ROM route unless there’s no other option (see Steam’s success in Russia). Typically of them, Nintendo are using an atom bomb to swat a fly and it’s not something that should be seen as harmless because there may well be repercussions for game preservation and availability in the future.
I’m not advocating the piracy of readily available games, but Nintendo don’t care about their customers. Suppose I wish to play Mother 3 via the translation patch . How is Nintendo being hurt by me doing so? Perhaps I’ll go on to buy the other Earthbound games? They’ve had an eternity to listen to clamouring fans but instead go on ignoring them, as well as tainting their legacy with these sorts of actions. In my mind it’s equivalent to having something that you’re not really interested in, but refusing to allow anyone else who may be to have a look.
i think “by law” nintendo is forced to do this to protect and keep their ip’s copyright, if they leave it “undefended” for long they might lose it “automatically”, (i think it was leonard french that talked about “having” to maintain those intermittent defenses like via dmca, unsure/cba to confirm or look up the vid)
abandonware doesn’t really mean anything in terms of rights, only when it’s freeware/shareware, since an entity can still have the license/trademark/copyright for the ip despite being unused or not, and thus must “defend” it if they wish to maintain the rights
-even if nintendo is being a bit of a dick about it and going more zealously around than others, (and don’t know how to do business proper/supply their customers).
But like the #1 kissboy: sings “nintendo will nintendo as long as nintendo is nintendo”
No that’s not at all how that works. You’re thinking of trademarks. Trademark laws and IP right laws are entirely different separate things. IP is governed rather by public domain laws which dictates just how long a creator supposed to be able to lay sole claim to an IP before it is transferred to public ownership.
Thanks to Disney this has in effect turned into indefinitely and will very likely continue to be extended as Disney’s old IPs require further extension of the law to never let Mickey mouse pass into the public domain.
I don’t see any reason why Mickey Mouse, or Mario or Sonic for that matter, should pass into the public domain to start with dude, that just wouldn’t make much sense
there is a difference between what i’m referring to
one thing is the time frame of which you have your copyright, which disney have helped to extend (for them, in the US), before then being forced into public domain
the other is that during that timeframe you still have to defend that copyright, otherwise an argument could begin to be made that they let their copyright pass “voluntarily”
which is why we see companies still defend their copyright in cases where it doesn’t really seem to make much, apparent, “business” sense,
-the way i remember/understood it
(since leonard french is a copyright attorney specifically and not trademark, i’m somewhat certain that was what he talked about and not the much more limited trademark+duration, -but since i cba to look it up i will concede that i could be mistaken/remembering wrong)
public domain rules, helps to ensure continued creativity
“half” of disney’s stuff couldnt’ have been made without public domain stuff if copyrights never lapsed (which is the big deal, (and sorta ironic), about them lobbying to keep it indefinite)
how exactly, anyone is free to invent any new characters and stories at any time, no need to use existing characters for that; these laws weren’t in place before hence there’s public domain now, but now these laws do exist and i don’t see how that prevents any continued creativity, if Disney wants to keep making profit from their characters they’ll also have to be continuously creative with them otherwise ppl just won’t “buy” their product
also yr a gnome so I’d argue there’s conflict of interest here and ofc yr pissed at Disney
i’m not a creator or creative mind so i couldn’t tell you, but that’s (one of) the argument(s)
i think the closes example i could give would be music, since so much music is “derivative” yet not, the way copyrights can work, it can stifle or make it hard for artists to compose new stuff, much more when sampling
then having copyrights eventually lapse means we wont “run out of notes” (since music vs lyrics are separate copyrights)
i don’t really have much “tangible” clue myself what they mean in regards to other creative expressions, since i also thought “can’t you just make up your own toon/characters”, but that was part of the debate, the merging of existing creative works to create new
don’t know if it’s because of certain elements eventually being so specific, or so occupied that they themselves are copyrightable, like Tolkien’s “hobbit” for instance where others then have to “suffice” using “halflings” and they don’t like that?? don’t know, or regular elements being used enough to be copyrightable? or then being able to “go down the ladder” to be trademarkable and abused there? no clue i’m not a creator, pure speculations
but it is a bit hypocritical tho, from disney, they way they’ve relied on public domain works, some of which was made “shortly” before the public domain/copyright rules got taken into effect (like the little mermaid for instance),
even more so since they wanted company held copyrights to last longer than an a personal/private authorship i think it was? (100 years vs 50 or something??) unsure can’t remember the details , just sounded very hypocritical the way it was laid out back when i saw it lol
and regardless, even if i’m not a creator/creative person, i do like the idea of someone coming up with another “mouse character” without maybe having to potentially battle with disney or WB, because “maybe resembles Mickey or Jerry” whatever lol, just sounds like “more potential content” in my ears with things entering public domain in a timely fashion , so why not -just think of all the fan games that could be made if/when copyrights entered public domain
Whilst this has been discussed as a reason for the take down of fan projects in the past (AM2R, Pokemon Uranium, etc…) I don’t think it’s applicable in this case. Where fan games are using Nintendo IP’s and resources to create and distribute their own spin-offs, Nintendo has to take action in order to ensure that the IP in question remains their property, and this action is indicative of the value of the IP. If they did nothing it would be a tacit acknowledgement that they have little interest in preserving their ownership rights. However, whilst it’s always been take downs in the past, there’s no reason why they couldn’t sign up these projects under a Nintendo umbrella thus retaining ownership but not destroying years of work.
These ROM sites are not utilising Nintendo IP’s. They’re not creating related material or developing on Nintendo ideas. In real terms they’re just distributing bit for bit (in principle anyway, some ROMs are modified) images of the games. There’s no alteration for the purpose of creativity, and I’m relatively certain that given the prevalence of other forms of piracy that ROM’s being downloaded are not impinging on Nintendo’s ownership rights. If that was the case then they’d be at risk of losing their rights until every single way to obtain game images was eliminated.
There are several Youtubers still being copyrighted like made for Pokemon, Mario etc Let’s Play videos and such. It may not be as crazy prominent as it was before, but it is still happening a lot.
i mean personally i agree with you, and is why the whole
seems true so often (intentionally limited supply of X, amibos, nes mini, taking out of production despite demand for more etc), like, nintento is strangely one of the few companies that has such a high fan/consumer demand, yet they almost sorta “refuse” to make money by supplying people with what they want,
-and then also instead opt to hammer them down with dmca instead, almost like they don’t want people do enjoy (all) of their stuff but rather have certain things gather dust instead of “green”
-but then again i’m no laywer, (and like the talks with fraggles displayed not even sure if i’m exactly on about copyright or trademark), +i’m certainly not a business exec, …or japanese , so i really couldn’t say exactly “why” they are doing the (dumbass) things they do sometimes, just a “maybe”
and under no circumstances do i think “copyright” warrants the treatment nintendo/some do if/when it’s sorta as much abandonware as can be when they won’t even emulate, remaster/remake and sell them “all” themselves
just merely offered my/a potential point what could be up with their panties being in a twist
… or maybe they actually do plan to revive their entire old libraries and do a full scale “old timey era” nintendo sale on the switch store? or some grander nes/snes gba/ds machine, “at some point” and thats why they are going so hard on them now ?
could be many things in the end i suppose, could just be “nintendo nintendoing because nintendo” out of pure malicious spite, or ate too many Toads and flailing in a fit?, can’t really say for sure ,
but not much can really do, (beyond speculating), since, unfortunately, “technically” they have the law on their side with the whole copyright thing… for the next, many, years to come…
no clue i’m not a creator, pure speculations 
, just sounded very hypocritical the way it was laid out back when i saw it lol
, so why not 
