Nintendo is a notorious control freak when it comes to their intellectual property — they’ll shut down fan made games, take videos down, and something YouTubers know well: they’ll use the Content ID system to take revenue from videos on YouTube.
And now they’ve gone a step further. The company is now flagging YouTube videos for using sound effects from its games. More specifically, they flagged YouTube videos for using sound effects from 1-2-Switch, the Switch party game.
Nintendo is using YouTube’s Content ID system to place a claim on videos that use their sound effects, claiming several videos from YouTuber “The Bit Block”, who has been making videos about Nintendo for many years.
One of his videos was flagged for using sound effects from 1-2-Switch and for using a line of dialogue from the game (“Ready… Fire!”).
Josh Thomas, the man behind the channel, says that it’s difficult to work on Nintendo videos because Nintendo strict about content ID, and forces channels to split revenue with the company for using its game footage. He told Kotaku:
“The work around here involves nearly completely muting the game music in the background, or flipping and altering the color in any trailer footage used. It all makes for a complicated process and in the end I feel forces me (and others) to create purposely inferior video content for no real reason.”
You can check out Thomas’ explanation of the events below: