Earlier this year, Nintendo launched a revenue sharing program for YouTube, where it basically claims all videos of its games as its own, and demands that channels pay up to 40% of ad revenue.
Immediately, the program was met with a lot of criticism, as YouTubers would have for fork up money to Nintendo for essentially advertising their product.
One popular YouTuber has now had enough. Joe Vargas, a.k.a Angry Joe, tried to add Nintendo content to his channel (with almost 2 million subscribers), but each time, Nintendo claimed the whole video.
Nintendo wants 40% of any revenue that videos of its game generate. It’s not enough to buy the game, you must also pay them “for sharing that experience with others” as Joe puts it in a new rant on Nintendo and its content policy.
Joe spent over $900 on the Wii U, extra controllers, and games in order to make Nintendo videos for his channel, but Nintendo kept giving him a content ID strike with YouTube — for the entire video. Not the music or portions of the video, Nintendo simply claimed the whole video.
“It’s not enough for Nintendo that you bought the console and games, they want to monetize any time you share your content with anyone else. That’s how fucking greedy Nintendo is”, says Joe, adding “I have not seen this behavior from any other modern company out there”.
Which makes little sense from a business perspective for Nintendo. So many other YouTubers have pointed this out: they’re helping spread the word about the game, and Nintendo still wants a cut of that.
Says Joe: “Why cant we be critical of Nintendo as much as we are of EA if they do something that’s shitty?”, adding that Nintendo has “a whole army of fanboys and haters trying to keep people quiet [about the issues]”.
And he’s not against the Wii U and the games. In fact, he says that he has “had more fun with my Wii U than my Xbox One and PS4 combined“, adding that he recommends the Wii U to all of his friends.
The problem is not the console or the games, but how Nintendo treats people who post videos of its games, according to Joe.
He’s got a valid point. No other gaming or console company does something like this, where they want a cut of someone’s gameplay video. Nintendo of course legally has the right to get a cut, as Joe points out, but that’s not the point — these videos are promoting the games and the console.
You can find the rant below.
