Record sales doesn't mean they had no lost sales from people who watched the story on streams. TLOU2 is not the only narrative game class. And no, they are not clueless. This media is protected as well as any other, as it should be. Publishers allow streaming, but they certainly could make businesses, shows, etc pay just like other industries have to when a person is making money dependent on a type of content someone else created.
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Creative Director at Typhoon Studios, AC3 & FC4: "streamers should be paying the developers and publishers of the games they stream"
- Thread starter dex3108
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People itt can't seem to wrap their head around symbiotic relationships. If the company isn't exploiting someone the company must be getting exploited.
Even though Google is in the other thread disavowing this dummy and saying just what you are saying in more PR words.
If this was in fact not a mutually beneficial relationship, not only do these companies have the legal power at their fingertips, the ability to stop paying streamers, their doing so, assuming they can't actually demonstrate an in-kind or monetary benefit, would be subject to lawsuit by the shareholders. Why don't you see any of that? Google has your answer: because everyone is benefitting here
This is the same industry that charges for buying the game full price, having microtransactions, DLCs, season passes, battle passes, online paywall, etc. Lol at people defending the sad old poor publishers. I can't take them serious. Can't believe people bring up other mediums as if they're any where close to how games are.
I agree with what you said. You wouldn't have publishers actively paying streamers to play their games if this wasn't the case.
In fairness, this is a much newer industry and medium than music and film and TV that have always enforced that people making money or creating an atmosphere for their own business and revenue using content must pay a commercial share, not use their personal CD or copy of a film in public.
No doubt people would go bonkers if this got level treatment as films and music for monetized channels and streamers. People already would shit on Nintendo every time in this community if they stopped a stream.
Where is the evidence?
That's what is lacking in their hot takes.
On the one hand we have all these examples of success and all these signals and outright statements that studios/publishers find these relationships beneficial, then you have a few random computer engineer grads on Twitter, without any supporting evidence, going "nuh uh, not true."
Who to believe....
I always find the argument that they are doing free advertising interesting because there's usually nothing to back up that "free advertising" is even needed. Has there been studies done to show that a game being streamed ends up with greater sales than if they just sold the game as normal and there was no streaming? It's a bit presumptuous to me and seems a way to sidestep the issue at hand which is do streamers have the right to stream the game without compensation to the publisher?
Part of the issue is the studios do pay for this stuff with a lot of streamers so the assumption seems to be that indeed it is beneficial. I can totally understand though from his point of view that if you're going to make money on my product, and let's be honest here the majority of the benefit runs one way, that I should be compensated. These streamers got big off the back of the game not the other way around.
Part of the issue is the studios do pay for this stuff with a lot of streamers so the assumption seems to be that indeed it is beneficial. I can totally understand though from his point of view that if you're going to make money on my product, and let's be honest here the majority of the benefit runs one way, that I should be compensated. These streamers got big off the back of the game not the other way around.
Because this is not film/music.
The relationship is mutually beneficial, that is not the case for someone hosting a film/music stream that simply gives people access to the entire experience for free.
Why are studios and major publishers PAYING streamers to host content? Because they think it creates an ROI for their brand/bottom line.
The same is not true for film/music. Which is why it is very easy to get all companies on board in terms of pursuing their legal rights to restrict access and license.
TLOU2 a game with a story broke records so they all have no idea what they are talking about.
I'm glad we finally have an expert in the thread.
Maybe the Vanishing of Ethan Carter or FMV games, adventures, walking simulators, turn based rpgs, etc. aren't comparable to TLOU2.
There are a ton of games where the unknown story plays a much bigger part in selling the game than it does for TLOU2.
Yeah, his one example doesn't carry much weight. It's a 2-hour long niche title costing 15 dollars. That was fighting all odds to be successful to begin with. It would be interesting to hear more concrete examples, though.
A game selling well or a publisher sending press copies to select streamers to promote is not evidence that the content itself is not protectable like film or music being used by businesses.
It's really fascinating how many people are conditioned to find the morally correct place as one where corporations are exploiting others.
So in this scenario then streamers should be compensated for any additional sales they generate, no? I mean after all, we all agree they are helping build brand exposure and loyalty, driving new sales. So they are basically uncompensated salesman(the revenue they do get is from advertising, not the studio).
But since streamers would have little to no leverage to enforce the latter, and studios little incentive to act fairly in monitoring or rewarding that, the net result is simply added exploitation on the part of the corporation, with the very real possibility it would neither work(as studios do find this mutually beneficial and would likely compete with one another to keep fees low or absent and set off a race to the bottom getting us right back where we are anyways), or would simply crash the community that undercuts the entire motive for the pursuit in the first place and studios would risk spending more money enforcing than they actually see in additional revenue.
Didn't say that.
That is a separate discussion(I am speaking strictly on the economics, not the legal capacity of studios to enforce copyright restrictions or licensing fees, which they seemingly have the right and strong standing if they wanted, which they don't use, which should tell you something) and one I am not having.
TLOU2 isn't truly linear in the way that, for example, a visual novel might be. In TLOU2, the main story beats are consistent from game to game but the actual gameplay experience could vary a lot from playthrough to playthrough. Also, TLOU2 is a rather long game (20-30 hours according to HLTB) so the scenario where someone watches a stream a bit and then decides to buy the game to play the whole thing themselves seems much more likely than it would be with a shorter game where someone might just watch an entire playthrough and have no desire to play it themselves.
Which really is one of the main issues here - there are so many different types of games that's it hard to make a blanket statement that is true for all games.
BTW, we give permission for people to stream any and all of our games.
The whole battle royale genre owes much of its popularity to streamers. It's not just Apex.
And I am sure that most games see an increase in popularity after a big streamer plays them. Among Us and Fall guys are the biggest examples, but it's not hard to imagine that many other games benefit from streaming as well. We don't need many "huge success out of nowhere" stories to know that streaming sells video games.
I believe that if a person watches a (full) play through of a linear story-driven video game, they probably would never buy this game in the first place anyway.
Its actually really funny. The "Pay them in exposure" thing has always been stupid. Its stupid when applied to trying to get free work from artists/contractors, and its stupid here too.
The guys ideas on streaming are wrong headed asf. But the "Exposure" angle isn't the one to use to show him he's wrong. I wish that whole exposure idea would just die.
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This so much.
This makes this entire discussion so frustrating. Like the whole thing is not really about who benefits or who is allowed to benefit. Newsflash: the corporation likely always benefits. The argument in favor of this kind of compensation is in favor of corporate rent seeking, nothing else. Even if this became how it works, small developers (and the people actually making the games, big and small) would never see any significant return whatsoever, it would just consolidate everything even more towards the big corporate stuff - on both sides of the coin, the streamers and the games industry. It's not about artists, or developers, or people, even if it might present itself that way.
YES companies can write whatever in their ULA to stop streamers from streaming their games, you can agree to that or not when you use/play/buy the game. That's not the point. This guy is acting like streamers are breaking the law, his point is constructed as a legal one because he acts like he is speaking for all devs/publishers. He didn't say "Hey stop streaming our game unless you pay us", because he's a coward, so he framed it as "I AM THE LAW.", putting streamers in the category of pirates, and he's wrong.
And most of them are dead
Words of mouth is good btw, just isn't a dealbreaker. "Free exposure" is not also a way to pay back. There's no such thing. The only actual good exposure requires money in the game, sponsorships and such. Happy little accidents do happen, but we live in a world where there are so many good games that both Steam and eShop are incapable of showing them all to you. The channels that do drive views mostly don't pick up random indies.
Tbh, if they cannot prove they're protected under fair use, they can get shut down. They shouldn't shut them down, but they could
You have multiple people participating in streamer communities.
From a strict sales perspective(ignoring goodwill benefits for now), in my mind, you have people that watch the stream and would never buy the game no matter what. People who watch the stream and could be motivated to purchase the game. People who watch a stream and are suddenly discouraged to purchase the game but would have purchased the game absent a stream.
First off, group one doesn't matter, at all. They aren't worth considering and aren't worth worrying about(though as I prefaced, you could break that group down further into people that won't play but will spread goodwill, and people that won't, the former being of benefit and worth considering). What seems to be the argument some are attempting to make is that there are more people in category 3 than 2, but all the signals from the people most invested in determining whether that is the reality, publishers and studios, seem to think the opposite.
I can maybe see a scenario where a studio with an entirely linear experience may see a net negative, and so that would be where they could use their legal leverage to impose restrictions, but it seems my sense, which is all we have without concrete and reliable data, is that all the market signals communicate this to be mutually beneficial. With no guarantee that a disruption on a large scale to impose licensing fees would maintain that.
Yeah someone watching a game stream of a narrative game does not equal a lost sale, similar to how someone downloading a game is not actually a lost sale. These arguments are always trotted out by the usual suspects and they are usually flimsy at best and bullshit at worst.
"Part of the setting of the medium"..... like literally NOTHING of what you just wrote makes any sense. Holy crap I've seen grasping at straws before but this is like next level mental gymnastics type crap you only see once in a while lol. Thanks
I literally gave your examples of reasons why people visit concerts/listen to music emphasizing where "value" is placed in the eyes of the consumers as being completely subjective to those consumers, all of them being completely provided by the content creators for example "lyrics" and you are really going to come of with some explanation "ohh those are all settings!" like what I'm I reading here??
Game making involves graphical artists, musicians, character creators and so on and so forth which all come as a whole to create a product. Just because the interactive portion of it is not there does not give anyone the right to legally do with all everything else on it what they want and make money on it. Mind blowing isn't it?
There is more to success stories than just industry-shatteringhits. A recent example is Phasmophobia, a game that has been blowing up thanks to content creator attention.
I don't believe we were talking about a right to do that. In that sense yes, I agree with you, this is something that needs to happen at the discretion of the copyright holder. My point is that allowing that can be very advantageous to them.
And Google makes the point that seems impossible to get across here: this is a mutually beneficial economic relationship for all parties and makes everyone better off.
Publishers may have a legal standing to impose fees/restrictions, but it should be telling they are continually choosing not to, and in many cases openly spending money to encourage streamers to host their content, and it likely has to do with those benefits and/or the real risk of upsetting a currently beneficial dynamic out of more greed. A greed that's pursuit may not produce a net benefit to studios, or whom's pursuit may destabilize the mutually beneficial dynamic currently existing and create a net negative situation.
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I completely disagree that this is a fact as a matter of copyright law. The act of using the copyright as the copyright holder designed and intended for it to be used is not a function of transformative or additive work.
I do agree that there are decent argument that streamers may engage in transformative use for the things they add beyond playing the game - i.e., their commentary, reactions, interactions with the chat, etc. But that variability in fair use has nothing to do with the nature of the game in question.
These aren't the same thing. Showing Netflix shows and recording them would lead to less people subscribing to Netflix. Streaming games is proven as a great way for companies to get essentially free advertising for their game and motivating people to buy there own copies (because hey that looks fun I want to buy it and play it). If you don't believe me just ask ANY marketing team for any publisher. There is a reason they don't go after these people. It's profit for both and as long as it stays that way I don't think streamers have to worry about losing their revenue to anyone.
Tfw your monolithically huge employer basically says you're an idiot to the press.
I am going to guess that is not true, though there IS a segment of people happy to watch story-heavy games in full on Youtube. I can't quite see that work on Twitch's format. The opposite has to be way more common.
Big streamers can make or break a game. And I'm personally convinced that Monster Hunter World's success is in part due to how well it was received on Twitch around release.
It's crazy to me that any of you can be out here calling for the death of streaming as a hobby and revenue stream, under some preset idea that it has actually hurt the industry in some way.
Meanwhile....
- We are setting console sale records with the Switch and PS4.
- First party games are breaking records almost every time one is released.
- There are more indie games being released then ever before, Steam is literally crowded with them.
- Breakout games like Fall Guys, Among Us and Humans Fall Flat see record sales after appearing on large streams.
- The most popular streamed games are making billions of dollars a year in MTX and Season Pass sales.
But yeah, Streaming is fucking horrible we should probably try and shut it down...../s
Meanwhile....
- We are setting console sale records with the Switch and PS4.
- First party games are breaking records almost every time one is released.
- There are more indie games being released then ever before, Steam is literally crowded with them.
- Breakout games like Fall Guys, Among Us and Humans Fall Flat see record sales after appearing on large streams.
- The most popular streamed games are making billions of dollars a year in MTX and Season Pass sales.
But yeah, Streaming is fucking horrible we should probably try and shut it down...../s
There is no such thing as too much advertising.
Advertising a popular IP may result in reduced ROI for the IP holder due to diminishing returns, true, but that's all accounted for in the marketing budget and calculations.
Hoeg Law has a video out on this, and seems like a good take.
TL;DW: The entire streaming industry is built on quicksand with no legal basis for it at all, because streaming rights are nearly always not granted in the terms of service, meaning publishers have a great big sword of damocles hanging over everyone streaming that they can drop at any time for any reason. So streaming rights should be granted more often, given that this is a clearly profitable industry for all involved.
He's not wrong but it's weird to me that some people (not you, person I'm responding to, just some people) see that and think "wow, time to start transferring a portion of every streamer, youtube reviewer, and tournament winner's paycheck to multibillion dollar corps" and not, y'know, "wow, time to fundamentally revamp IP laws"
I'd disagree with it being quicksand. Or some ever-present Sword of Damocles.
Because to do so either ignores or misunderstands the dynamic of this market space. Which is highly competitive on the supply side(meaning studios want their games featured prominently and go to lengths to achieve it), while also being largely universally perceived as a net beneficial market.
Any unilateral imposition of C&D or attempted lawsuits/licensing fees will not only remove benefits of streaming platforms by discouraging your products usage on it, but erode brand/company goodwill and confer those benefits to competitors. A double whammy that makes pursuing such action almost always bad business.
For streamers it basically means the risk of their business model is relatively low.
All of which isn't to say these legalities wouldn't be better served clarifying and to shore up, they would, but I think the risk of market collapse for the streamer for the foreseeable future is relatively low. Lower than a whole shitton of entrepreneurial ventures a person could pursue.
Also this.
Some people are too conditioned to think systemically imposed asymmetrical corporate power is the morally ideal societal posture to maintain.
Really speaks to how successful the 100 year + campaign has been in propagandizing society into this sort of bastardized concept of how capital markets should behave and who they should exist to serve.
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The idea throughout this thread that you can just take points made in traditional anti-capitalist literature and then arbitrarily map Owner -> developer and worker -> streamer is so fucking hilariously misguided that I don't even know how to properly discuss it. Streamers aren't the fucking working class in this scenario. Lmao.
Nobody is arguing that streamers dont' benefit publishers, but that only describes the dynamic right now and it's naive to just assume it will always be this way. The entire point of the discussion is that the bubble that streamers currently enjoy and profit from is only made possible by publishers' leniency. There's easily a future in which publishers wish to establish more control over how their games are shown publicly, e.g. by employing and paying their own streamers, at which point they may choose to crack down on unlicensed use of their content. Laws are written around bubbles, not for them, so however "good for business" streamers happen to be for publishers right now is entirely beside the point.
Nobody is arguing that streamers dont' benefit publishers, but that only describes the dynamic right now and it's naive to just assume it will always be this way. The entire point of the discussion is that the bubble that streamers currently enjoy and profit from is only made possible by publishers' leniency. There's easily a future in which publishers wish to establish more control over how their games are shown publicly, e.g. by employing and paying their own streamers, at which point they may choose to crack down on unlicensed use of their content. Laws are written around bubbles, not for them, so however "good for business" streamers happen to be for publishers right now is entirely beside the point.
How is this any different than music artsist suing people like Trump who use their music without consent? I often wondered why streamers are able to make money while using content they didn't create as a backdrop. Yes I know it's free advertising but it could also be bad advertising. Some travel Youtubers are also waking up to the realization they cannot film at national parks without a permit.
No, it's a critical point. Because whether a market is highly competitive, sustainable and/or mutually beneficial or not is highly dependant on determining its current or forecasting its future volatility.
This is no different than opening a low-cost butcher shop that relies entirely on local farmers that at any point in the future could see changes in the law, subsidies, or market that incentivizes them to raise prices or shift their focus entirely to products the butcher shop isn't built to supply and the butcher would be fucked. Or a movie chain that at any point studios could decide to abandon that release model or impose new fees that would make their models unsustainable.
Yes, streamers are dependant on content producers supplying a product they can use for their business without legal hassle, and are at the mercy of the market, supply chains, and the courts, welcome to capitalism!
But if you step back and apply any reasonable amount of analysis or economic behavioral forecasting, it's pretty clear that as far as non-producer businesses go, streaming is not in the sort of dire Damocles situation you and others are framing it.
Dev behind DUSK and Gloomwood is very unhappy with the statement, and believes streaming helped him sell his game. Very long comment.
The tea is that this particular person is bemoaning that he(?) isn't making more money when whatever streamer is making ad venue, when just like everyone else seems to want to do, he should be punching up not down.
As I said, it's no accident that the current environment turned out this way, and the biggest reason it continues is because the companies who had a major hand in this are making a lot of money. If they weren't, they have immediate and direct options available to shut stuff down. For every one big streamer there are hundreds trying to be big in their own way who will be forgotten in no time if they mess up in one way or another, or even if they don't, look at stuff like tumbler and how that went down for those content creators. It's the same way with indie devs, so many love it when people stream their games and hope that they are the next breakout hit but I am fine if a dev doesn't want that for whatever reason too. Those streamers are adding stuff to make games much bigger hits than they could be otherwise over and over again, and a lot of times on their own initiative without even being paid directly by said devs.
If anything the ones who should be demanding more concrete and favorable terms are the streamers since their livelihood can be gone for no discernible reasons (like what is happening on Twitch and what happened with Youtube). If they are making those companies so much money that said companies love things as they are and are scared of changing it up even when they have so many options to do so available to them, then there is absolute value in what the streamers are doing, even if it is hard to quantify specifically what that is at any given moment or current legal terms are downplaying it.
Tldr edit: Ask yourself why the most immediate backlash that Hutchison himself is feeling rn is, in fact, not from the streamers but Google itself.
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It's entirely different. A butcher has to purchase material goods from farmers in order to add value to that product via labor and re-sell it and thus even the shittiest butcher still acts primarily as a customer for the farmer. This is more like some kid going to the farm and taking pictures of all the cows and showing them to everyone around town with his hot takes on each cow. If it happens to benefit the farmer, great, but there is no incentive to create legislation protecting the kids' right to do that.
There are differences in any market relationship, but the butcher is subject to producer volatility and dependence is the point there.
And if that photo-taking business provides a material net benefit for both parties, there is zero incentive, in fact, a disincentive, to try and impose a fee or restriction on him doing it.
So you are proving my point, which had nothing to do with creating new legislation, and entirely to do with this incorrect assessment that this market space is some volatile market with some outsized chance of critical collapse due to the legal framework the parties are operating in. The mutually beneficial, positive-sum relationship stabilizes and structuralizes it's continuation and perpetuation, and therefore makes that outcome unlikely in the currently foreseeable future.
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Imagine looking at the history of the actions of copyright holders in the music or movie industry and thinking that is a desirable model to replicate
I guess without seeing into the future neither of us can say with 100% certainty, but I'm personally very skeptical that the current way of doing things is sustainable for long. Nothing in this business ever stays consistent for more than a generation or two.
I will say that I personally don't think that any licensing or regulation should be enforced, which if I understand you, I think you would agree with as well. I just differ in the idea that this relationship, in its current form, is here to stay.
Weird analogy because current IP laws expressly would protect the kid's right to do exactly that and give the farmer essentially no rights over the photos other than to tell the kid to stop trespassing on his land
Brb gonna put this one to the test.
*grabs camera and some rubber boots*
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