YouTubers who feature Nintendo games and products have long had issues with YouTube’s controversial Content ID system, and Nintendo’s aggressive usage of that system is already impacting how YouTubers cover games on the Switch. Recently, a YouTuber had their video flagged by YouTube’s Content ID system over a sound effect from a Switch launch game.
YouTube’s Content ID system is an automated system that allows copyright holders to place claims on videos who use their content. In theory, Content ID prevents piracy and allows copyright holders make money off their work. In practice, YouTubers who make videos under fair use end up having to fight an automated system to protect their content.
Josh Thomas has been covering Nintendo for a decade at his YouTube Channel, The Bit Block. He’s recently had a video about 1 2 Switch flagged over sounds from the games: A music track from the game and a man saying “Ready… Fire!” from the Quick Draw minigame. The former is not surprising: YouTubers know that music tracks often get dinged, and videos can be flagged for even a few seconds of a trailer. In this case, having specific sound effects set the system off is not quite unprecedented, but feels extreme.
According to Thomas, the content ID troubles aren’t helped by the fact that Nintendo’s affiliate program causes YouTubers to split profits from any videos using footage of their games with Nintendo itself. YouTubers like Thomas find themselves in a hard spot when trying to cover Nintendo. “The work around here involves nearly completely muting the game music in the background, or flipping and altering the colour in any trailer footage used,” Thomas said over email. “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.”
“To clarify this video in question (among hundreds of others in the past) is actually well within fair use,” he said over email. “The video shows us physically demonstrating 1 2 Switch, adding our own silly commentary on camera and is edited quite a bit. It isn’t merely a matter of gameplay being uploaded without any kind of transformative work put into it.”
Thomas insists that he still loves Nintendo, but like many YouTubers who cover the company, he is clearly frustrated. “Essentially what I’m saying is, Nintendo, please stop hurting me,” he says in his video. “Please stop trying to stop me from celebrating you as a company.”
The Nintendo Switch comes with a built-in feature to take screenshots of games, but unlike its other console competitors, does not have the ability to record and share video on social media. It seems that, for the time being, Nintendo is not ready to play nice with YouTube yet.
Comments
9 responses to “Nintendo Flags YouTuber For Using Switch Sound”
this also explains the hype around the switch
its all controlled by nintendo the reviews and footage
Fake news!
Follow the money!
The moon landing never happened, vaccines turn you gay, sandy hook was a false flag operation, zelda isn’t actually that good!
Can you imagine if Zelda was a girl though? Think of the controversy!
Well yeah, they do control their Youtube channel which houses all the stuff I watched that got me hyped.
do you guys even follow what nintendo does to content producers?
its god awful
Stop punching yourself in the face, Nintendo!
Nintendo has never really been good at sharing. It’s always been about creating tightly-controlled platforms with highly-manicured content, of which they can have full ownership and dominion.
They’ve also never excelled at or even seemingly fully understood the power of the internet. Their half-handed attempts at integrating and participating in it are merely capitulating to user demand, but you can bet they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t have to.
They are incredible control freaks so their approach to youtube is unsurprising, to say the least.
All of the Nintendo post release events were courting large numbers of youtubers… not one of them on record asked about Nintendos policy.
So this is the Share/Capture button? So how quick is it? And how quickly will it get a DMCA takedown?
So many youtubers, many of them not affiliated, not one asked about fair use? Or got an answer worth repeating. Found it alarming that they were blind sided by the console, they didnt ask about their career.
They don’t want anyone using any of their copyrighted materials, even if it’s completely within the acceptable fair use guidelines, because they don’t want anyone profiting from their work…..but they are quite happy to ping content creator’s videos and then take ad revenue from them even though they’ve contributed nothing to the original content that creator has made. It’s spectacularly hypocritical.