Stadia Creative Director Triggers Uproar on Twitter

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, Shreyas1 said:

I mean in a sense they are paying the game developers in a way that is far more effective than just money.

 

If it weren't for streaming, games like Among Us, Fortnite, PUBG, and pretty much any other game that has been a major phenomenon over the past few years would be unheard of. Game streaming is extremely lucrative for devs as its basically free advertising

That is what I was thinking. I mean streamers have actually been paid to play games for a reason. Its good advertising. 

[sof006]

"Should be paying publishers"...

 

No actually i'd massively disagree, why? Because free publicity, advertising etc. If people see some dude on Twitch with an absolute crap ton of followers playing your game they're very likely to also want to buy and play it. Just today I was watching someone play the new Doom Eternal DLC and I decided to buy the new DLC... In fact I am fairly sure publishers give away free copies of games to these streamers on purpose for this exact reason.

[poochyena]

18 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Correct, but you can damn well believe there are companies out there trying to make individuals rent their music forever, rather than own it.

Look at the flap over singing "Happy Birthday" in public places. That shit is out of control.

what are you talking about? You can sing happy birthday to your heart's content in public. You can even sell your own recording of it since its open domain.

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, poochyena said:

what are you talking about? You can sing happy birthday to your heart's content in public. You can even sell your own recording of it since its open domain.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/warner-music-pays-14-million-863120

 

At one point in time they wanted royalties for singing it in a public place. While the lawsuit has been settled, it showed they tried to control this.

[spartaman64]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/french-regulator-says-google-must-pay-news-sites-to-send-them-traffic/

this is so hypocritical considering this

 

I think linus should pull down all his reviews of google products to avoid google trying to charge them for having their products in those reviews especially his stadia review

[poochyena]

1 hour ago, Radium_Angel said:

At one point in time they wanted royalties for singing it in a public place.

this isn't true, unless by "public" you mean large organized event (as in hundreds of people)

[GoldSrc]

Oh boy, wait until he finds out about things like Gmod or general Machinima content.

Videogames are not like movies or songs, where the content remains static forever, where you could claim that you need a license to stream that.

With videogames? Every single playthrough is different, it's dynamic, user-generated, and the only owner of that content is the user.

 

The only thing where he might have a point, are cutscenes, but people don't watch streamers to watch cutscenes.

What a dumb point to make on is part, it's almost like he doesn't understand how the Internet works, he may not even be aware that the Internet is fueled by cat pictures.

[19_blackie_73]

6 hours ago, Spotty said:

No developer is stupid enough to be the first to do that.

Ah well there are developers and there is EA. I would have the faith in them to pull such a stunt

[poochyena]

an update

Google on Thursday distanced itself from tweets issued by the creative director of Stadia's Montreal Studio, who said game streamers should be paying devs and publishers of games they stream.

[DeScruff]

6 hours ago, Spotty said:

Game developers could be smart about streaming though and build in to their game mechanics for streamers to utilise to generate money, which the developers could take a cut from with partnership with popular streaming platforms (Twitch). Look at what Borderlands 3 did with "echocast" where viewers can pay to trigger events in game such as giving rewards or spawning enemies.

 

Developers should embrace streaming. Not tax it.

I mean that is pretty much Youtube Superchat in a nutshell. But if it was integrated into a game then damn yeah I could see that being popular with certain streamers.

[Fatih19]

I hope Stadia die in silence never to be remembered.

[Nowak]

7 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

I'm reminded of situations where the RIAA has tried to sue people for playing the radio in restaurants and bars, only to get smacked down by the courts because the license to publicly broadcast those songs has already been paid for by the radio station.

 

The streamers already paid for the games. IF they charge extra for streaming rights, people will just not stream those games. Where I a game streamer, I would do that without a second thought.

Also don't forget... sponsored streams are a thing, and game publishers often hand streamers free keys hoping that will generate more sales. Game publishers are embracing streaming, and not in ways this guy expects.

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

I think linus should pull down all his reviews of google products to avoid google trying to charge them for having their products in those reviews especially his stadia review

No, fuck this cancerous "cancel culture" you are trying to push.

One employee saying something on his personal Twitter account should not be a reason to boycott a company. All that will lead to is that employees are no longer allowed to have personal social media accounts. It won't actually change how anyone thinks.

[LAwLz]

Also, there are a lot of armchair legal experts in this thread who clearly has 0 understanding of how copyright, fair use and licensing works.

 

At its core, the creative director is correct. Game developers could, legally, enforce policies where game streamers would have to pay to stream games. It doesn't matter that YOU think it's "free publicity" because it is the game developers that decide if they want that "free publicity" or not, not you.

 

It doesn't matter that "sometimes streamers are paid to play games" because in those cases there is actually a separate contract but more importantly it is the game developer who agreed to it. You can't just say "well I am giving you free publicity so therefore I am allowed to do this" if the developer haven't agreed.

 

Fair use is also not as clear cut as some of you like to think it is. Things like reaction videos are not proven to be transformative, nor has "simply playing the game" been proven to be transformative either. Even if it is transformative, that's only one part of fair use. Something can be transformative and still not be fair use.

 

If you ask me, the discussion shouldn't be about whether or not it is legal to stream games without permission (it is probably not) but whether or not ENFORCING the legal rights of the game developers is a good idea or not. Alex seems to think that they should. A lot of developers probably disagrees.

[Mark Kaine]

33 minutes ago, Nowak said:

Also don't forget... sponsored streams are a thing, and game publishers often hand streamers free keys hoping that will generate more sales. Game publishers are embracing streaming, and not in ways this guy expects.

Well yeah, but technically they could do this. They need not to allow their games being streamed at all. 

 

Would that be a bad idea? Sure, but they can do that so they can also ask for "compensation". 

 

And seeing how the whole game streaming server thing is aimed at taking any and all remaining reminiscences of ownership and consumer rights this'll probably happen sooner or later. 

 

"Streamers" will pay up because otherwise they would need to look for a real job. /s

[LAwLz]

1 minute ago, Mark Kaine said:

"Streamers" will pay up because otherwise they would need to look for a real job. /s

I wouldn't be surprised if game streaming services like xCloud and other "gaming-as-a-service" subscriptions will later move over to "home use" or "business use" accounts.

So if you are just using the service to play games at home then a "home account" is good enough.

If you are in somewhat profiting from the service (like being a professional streamer, or reviewer or whatever) then you would need a "business account".

 

If Mixed had been successful then I wouldn't have been surprised if Microsoft had integrated xCloud and Mixer in a way where you needed a "business account" for certain features critical to professional streaming, such as accepting donations and subscribers only working if you had a business tier xCloud account.

But that would not have happened all at once. They would probably move towards that goal over the span of like 10 years, slowly integrating more things into business accounts and removing them from home accounts.

[Eaglerino]

The guy behind an effort trying to permanently remove media ownership doesn't like independent people making money by streaming media? shocking

[Drama Lama]

8 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

Game Streaming services like Stadia need to die horribly in a fire

What about Gforce now?

I mean they just provide servers where you can play the games you already bought.

[Thaldor]

Well legally he isn't wrong. For most other media you will need other than end-user license to stream/show the media publicly and the fair use won't protect you if you just stream a whole movie with your face in one corner or whole song or read whole book. Legally game dev/publisher could include in their ToS/EULA that you may not stream or otherwise publicly use the game and they could have different "streamer" license that would include agreement to stream the game.

 

Game company would be shooting their own leg but as we know we have game companies that are as smart as amoebas in prehistoric jelly. Actually I kind of can see EA doing this since they are now (at least in Finland) really pushing their games into esports and that as a whole as a sport to be shown with the real sports on pay channels/services (especially NHL which will have it's own "e-league" on pay service that shows Finnish hockey league). I wouldn't be surprised at all if EA was to require licensing fee to stream NHL, FIFA and whatever shit they also do in the future if they manage to get them shown as sports with real sports on paid services because those services have money, and they have a shit ton of it, and if they see the profits they are more than happy to pay whatever astronomical prices EA asks as long as they can have exclusivity or others must pay the same price (this is why many sports events aren't shown globally, because they are expensive as frack to show, we talk 7-9 figure numbers only for streaming/broadcasting Super Bowl, not to even talk about a whole season of NFL).

 

And then there are the platform licenses. Remembering how "good" start Stadia had I wouldn't be a single bit surprised if Stadia 2 would have "Do not stream from me"-label on it and Google 200% concentrated to remove each and every video about it from YT and Google search and otherwise be completely asshat on the subject and use every possible legal string to restrict the public speaking about it. After all they would loose a shit ton of possible buyers if everyone knew the service was shit or they would loose maybe a little less than shit ton of buyers for the shitstorm coming from being asshat, they will loose buyers eitherway so they most likely choose the one that has greater possibility to cost them less buyers.

[Neftex]

i dont see much difference between streaming single player story game and streaming a movie. im not saying streamers should start paying to stream games but i can see his point of view

[Video Beagle]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Fair use is also not as clear cut as some of you like to think it is. Things like reaction videos are not proven to be transformative, nor has "simply playing the game" been proven to be transformative either. Even if it is transformative, that's only one part of fair use. Something can be transformative and still not be fair use.

 

Further, Fair Use is a defense. As in, you're sued by a corporation with big money and you in court claim it. It's not something you can use to premempt legal issues. It perhaps hasn't been worth the time and effort for developers to go to court about streaming..but someone just rang the starting bell...

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

 

So if you are just using the service to play games at home then a "home account" is good enough.

If you are in somewhat profiting from the service (like being a professional streamer, or reviewer or whatever) then you would need a "business account".

Interesting thought.

I'd been thinking, I could see some game companies enforcing a "pay us to stream" policy, while someone uses "free to stream" as incentive to buy from them instead. 

1 hour ago, Eaglerino said:

The guy behind an effort trying to permanently remove media ownership doesn't like independent people making money by streaming media? shocking

.....that seems like a lofty goal for a Stadia creative director....what are you on about?

[Brooksie359]

12 hours ago, The_russian said:

 

There's a difference between paying for a product and using that product to make money. Think of it like buying a song on Google Play Music or Apple Music. Even though you paid for the song, you are not allowed to use it in a YouTube video and make money. By no means am I agreeing with him, if developers start charging for licenses to stream their games they are just shooting themselves in the foot, but the argument that streamers already payed for the game isn't a very good argument. 

I mean then should people who do product reviews on YouTube have to pay the brand of the product? I mean if they are making money for doing a reviews on a corsair case should they be paying corsair because they are making money off of their product? I think there is definitely an issue if we go down that path. 

[MetEishYa]

12 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

I mean then should people who do product reviews on YouTube have to pay the brand of the product? I mean if they are making money for doing a reviews on a corsair case should they be paying corsair because they are making money off of their product? I think there is definitely an issue if we go down that path. 

Reviews and criticism are protected by copywrite law. Not the same thing.

[spartaman64]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

No, fuck this cancerous "cancel culture" you are trying to push.

One employee saying something on his personal Twitter account should not be a reason to boycott a company. All that will lead to is that employees are no longer allowed to have personal social media accounts. It won't actually change how anyone thinks.

i was just highlighting how ridiculous what hes saying is and hes not some low level employee hes a director so he could make that decision 

 

also again hes a hypocrite because google is doing the same thing to news companies 

[Doobeedoo]

He's a complete moron. Also an openly greedy <removed by staff>

Edited October 25, 2020 by SansVarnic
Removed content.