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[Meffer]

I'm reading through this, but one thing I wanted to comment before I continue.



This is complete horsecrap. YouTubers are not holding games at ransom, and the fact someone is suggesting this is ridiculous to me. Yes, big YouTubers can bring success to a game, and in that sense they are invaluable, but they are not the only means to the way or the sole cause to a game succeeding or failing, and honestly it's not their responsibility to play every game out there. This is putting way too much stake into them, when it's up to the developer/publisher to market their game. Sure they can be invaluable, yes, but in no way by them not playing a game are they, "holding the games on ransom."

The problem is that some are trying to.

 

[mrklaw]

this is basically the flip side of the argument when companies want rev shares from youtubers because they are making money from their games. If you reject those requests, you shouldn't then do the same thing to games developers.

The simplistic thing to say is that popular youtubers make some money from lets plays. Games publishers might see an uptick in sales because of their game being on some popular channels. Maybe those two things just balance out, so how about the youtube guys keep their money, and the publishers keep theirs?

the reality will be somewhere inbetween though, but I don't see how you can measure it meaningfully. If you could measure it, you'd need rev shares in both directions for it to be fair.
Eg
- Yogscast can show that featuring game X on their channel will raise sales by an average 3% during the first week of a video being published. So they want 20% of that increase in sales.
- Game X publisher can show that yogscast make £150k purely from streaming lets plays of their title. They want 20% of that revenue.

 

[Messofanego]

this is basically the flip side of the argument when companies want rev shares from youtubers because they are making money from their games. If you reject those requests, you shouldn't then do the same thing to games developers.

The simplistic thing to say is that popular youtubers make some money from lets plays. Games publishers might see an uptick in sales because of their game being on some popular channels. Maybe those two things just balance out, so how about the youtube guys keep their money, and the publishers keep theirs?

the reality will be somewhere inbetween though, but I don't see how you can measure it meaningfully. If you could measure it, you'd need rev shares in both directions for it to be fair.
Eg
- Yogscast can show that featuring game X on their channel will raise sales by an average 3% during the first week of a video being published. So they want 20% of that increase in sales.
- Game X publisher can show that yogscast make £150k purely from streaming lets plays of their title. They want 20% of that revenue.

We'd need a new program/algorithm to track that video->sales cause-and-effect. I don't think there is one currently. If there was one already, then it'd make sense to go through with this, but right now it's presumptive to know how much of a sell-through these kind of videos will have.

 

[mrklaw]

We'd need a new program/algorithm to track that video->sales cause-and-effect. I don't think there is one currently. If there was one already, then it'd make sense to go through with this, but right now it's presumptive to know how much of a sell-through these kind of videos will have.

Right. So just let everyone keep their own revenue. YouTube channels don't start charging for potential-yet-unprovable game sales increases, and game publishers don't start claiming rev share from YouTube revenue which is advertising your product.

 

[Messofanego]

Right. So just let everyone keep their own revenue. YouTube channels don't start charging for potential-yet-unprovable game sales increases, and game publishers don't start claiming rev share from YouTube revenue which is advertising your product.

Yup.