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[WeylandxYutani]

As someone who works in the industry I can categorically say that Let's Plays and Streams make a huge difference to sales - especially for indies/ non AAA.

This!

A major MMO has a sizeable "influencer program" for streamers and youtubers and it drives in significant number of new players.Its not your only marketing tool but its a powerful part of a broader marketing program

 

[Bricky]

Let's Plays can give an enormous, unprecented boost to sales and visibility. They're probably the best marketing tool a developer, especially those without millions to spend on it, could wish for; free exposure to millions of potential customers.

The people not buying games because they watched a Let's Play are mostly those who weren't going to buy it themselves anyway. They're either more into watching LPs than playing games or they are watching because they can't afford or play the game otherwise (or don't think its worth the price of admission).

I think the percentage of gamers actually watching certain games instead of playing them and thus 'costing sales' is negligible. If anything, and that's stretching it, they're a small subset of the piracy problem. The amount of people buying games because of LPs easily make up for them.

 

[legendaryskitch]

Let's plays definitely help sales for most games. I know of tons of games that I got because of let's plays as well as several of my friends. Undertale is a great example too. The amount of free marketing that game is getting from many of the biggest YouTubers is definitely helping the sales.

You can argue that people just watch the game and not buy it which obviously some people will do but it's typically the people who wouldn't buy it anyway. Hell, I bought Undertale after seeing it on game grumps and loved it enough to convince friends to buy it and experience the game.

There's no way games like Undertale, Goat Simulator, I am Bread or even FNAF would've been half as successful without YouTube. It probably doesn't help AAA games much but indies absolutely it does.

 

[Diprosalic]

think it can help smaller games quite a bit but overall it's not doing much in either direction.

 

[YianGaruga]

Steamspy / Sergey Galyonkin actually did some work on this, looking at correlation between Youtube views and sales of games. I'll try to find it and post it here.

EDIT:

Here is a graph about Youtube views and game sales for all paid games released in August, 2015.
Please note that both scales on this graph are logarithmic
As you can see YouTube exposure strongly correlates with sales even in the first month after game release. The correlation becomes stronger as the time passes.
Of course, it might also mean that Youtubers are more likely to cover good games that are more likely to sell well.

 

[Raist]

I do think it's got an impact on sales, yeah. Moreso than reviews.
Either positive or negative, but that would mostly depend on the game itself.

 

[slavesnyder]

Depends on the game ... Story heavy games cost sales (adventures and the like) but gameplay heavy games (mario maker, minecraft) boost sales

This.

 

[TI82]

Definitely gives more exposure to some games that would not get any before.

 

[socksfelloff]

For me, streaming and let's plays work like renting a game or playing a demo. If it's a game I'm interested in buying ill check out some YouTube previews or twitch streams and see what's it's all about. In the old days I would rent the game first/ shareware or download a demo.

I never watch a full play through of a game. If I'm not going to play it I'd rather just watch a movie.

 

[magnetic]

It can boost sales, but it doesn't always.

This is an interesting video on the subject from a few months ago by TotalBiscuit, and the game he's specifically focusing on had a video with over half a million views by JackSepticEye (?), but the dev claims that they only got about 20 sales off the back of that coverage.

Check it out. That figure is mentioned about six minutes in: https://youtu.be/Q4F-zdpFb9I

The video by Jacksepticeye most likely got half a million views because of him and not the game. The game in question also looks very disorienting and annoying, I'm not surprised that it only made 20 additional sales. I'm sure the developer spend a lot of time and love to create it, so I feel a bit bad bashing it, but the footage made me quite dizzy after a while.

Subscribers to these YouTubers probably automatically watch every single new video they do, so that high view numbers means very little in the context of the specific game.

I guess the type of game that works with this type of audience is "that looks hilarious when (screaming hyperactive zany facecam dude) does it, I will have similar strong reactions if I buy this!", like Flappy Bird or Happy Wheels. Now you can scream FUCKKKKK just like EpicReactionBro97!

Someone brought up Skate 3 played by PewDiePie, and I would guess that most people bought that game for the moments when the game flings your ragdoll body around rather than the in-depth skating mechanics.

 

[writeandwrong]

You say that but I've talked to a couple youtubers, and even just looking around, Undertale is usually their highest viewed content on their channels at the moment.

Yeah, that's because Undertale is one of the most talked about games right now. It doesn't change the fact that most viewers would have already been following those Let's Players in some capacity, the fact that the game was popular just gave them even more incentive to click on it and see that person's take on it.