Popular YouTube personality Angry Joe has made it clear that there will be no more Nintendo videos on his channel. A copyright claim against a recently published Mario Party 10 video by AngryJoe on his YouTube channel was the the straw that broke the camel’s back as he took to Twitter to express his outrage.
I hope @NintendoAmerica enjoyed the free ad revenue & coverage I generated for em. It will be my last Nintendo video. pic.twitter.com/07797eA7W4
— Joe Vargas (@AngryJoeShow) April 4, 2015
Polygon picked up on the tweet from the favored YouTube personality whose channel sits around 2 million subscribers as of this writing. In a later tweet , Angry Joe stated that he had spent over $900 on Wii U hardware for use in his videos while expressing disgust that, “They need to monetize when I share my play sessions.”
The idea of sharing revenue with YouTube personalities such as Angry Joe manifested itself with the Nintendo Creator’s Program . The program requires YouTube content creators to register with Nintendo and agree to produce videos off an approved white list . Once the video is posted Nintendo will share share up to 70 percent of the revenue with the content creator, though this rate can “change from time to time” and payments can take up to two months to process via PayPal who also takes a cut of transactions leaving less money in the hand of the creator.
In the case of Angry Joe’s YouTube video of Mario Party 10 for the Wii U, it was not clear if the claim was an automatic one from YouTube or if was initiated by Nintendo themselves. The Content Creator program is still in beta and not scheduled for a full release until May 27, 2015. Regardless of the circumstance, Vargas has called it quits and will no longer feature Nintendo content on his channel.
The Nintendo Creators Program itself was met with almost universal disdain, especially from Angry Joe (NSFW – Language) as well as Jim Sterling (NSFW – Language) and PewDiePie . In PewDiePie’s tumblr post regarding the program from Nintendo his views.
“If I played a Nintendo game on my channel. Most likely most of the views / ad revenue would come from the fact that my viewers are subscribed to me. Not necessarily because they want to watch a Nintendo game in particular.”
Publishers and developers have every legal right to say what can and can not be used in terms of content creation, be it recognized video game news sites such as IGN or Polygon or down to the local high school student who wants make their own Let’s Play. And while there is some sense of fair play in sharing the revenue between content creators and copyright owners, the public perception of such a program like Nintendo’s Creator Program comes across as somewhat draconian.
[Image Source | Angry Joe]
