The monetarisation of Let's Plays: an exercise in copyright management

Despite his impressive pedigree, having served time as a patent examiner with the UK's Intellectual Property Office, Katfriend and Page Hargrave trainee patent attorney Sean Gilday is modest enough to describe himself as something of a novice in the fields of both patent attorneyhood and guest-blogging. However, if there is one thing that Sean is prepared to admit to being reasonably well versed in, it’s video games.  Several news articles circulating recently have motivated him to write a post that takes a look at the oftentimes hazy interface where the world of video games touches the world of intellectual property.  Sean writes:

This week, Nintendo became the last of the “big three” in the world of home game consoles (the others being Sony and Microsoft) to assert its copyright against so-called “Let’s Play” videos uploaded to YouTube.  Briefly, a Let’s Play video is a screen capture of a person playing through the entirety of a video game, usually accompanied by a commentary from that person. 

 Under the terms of service, owners of copyright material may register their content with YouTube’s database.  When a user attempts to upload a video which YouTube detects as matching that content, the owner has several options: (a) he can do nothing, (b) he can have the video taken down, or (c) he may allow the video to stay up but play adverts at the start, with any resulting revenue going to the copyright holder.  Nintendo has opted for option (c), releasing a press statement to the effect that this will allow fan-made videos to stay up, while preventing people from making an otherwise gratuitous use of Nintendo’s IP, the assumption here being that “fans” would simply make videos for the love of it, and not for any pecuniary remuneration. 

 Several points of interest arise from this: 

 First, Nintendo’s press statement accompanying this decision implies that they are being fairly public spirited by allowing the videos to stay up, and that they merely wish to stop people profiting from their IP.  Ironically, however, the result of this action for the video-sharing community is that adverts have now been forced onto many fan-made videos that didn’t previously have them.  Those videos could be considered the purest type of fan-made video, as the creators didn’t make any money from any exploitation of the IP. 

 It may be worth just considering all the places where IP does subsist is in this instance.  The code of video game being played is protected under copyright (rather clumsily as a literary work under the UK's Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA) 1988 (s.3(1)(b), CDPA).  Naturally, a video taken of a video game is a film under s.5B(1) CDPA.  However, in a Let’s Play the video was made by the fan making the video.   

There is an exception in s.5B(4) that copyright does not subsist in a film which is a copy taken from a previous film, but for most games (except perhaps for the genre of games called interactive movies, and some point ‘n’ click games) it seems unlikely that the developer or publisher would have made a near-identical video of a fan-made playthrough. 

Karpov v Kasparov (1985):
black to play and win

 The art assets of the game are protected as artistic works.  Many video games also have “cutscenes” which are essentially short videos, and copyright would subsist in them as films.  Similarly, music from the game would be protected as a sound recording.  Also, don’t forget any trade marks the developer might have embedded into its product.  To me, it seems more appropriate to consider most video games as, well, games -- that is, a set of rules or parameters within which one may play.  If we compare this to some other games, it would seem quite bizarre to demand that BSkyB remunerate the person who codified football (or his estate for 70 years post mortem auctoris) for making videos of the games.  Indeed, like football matches, most playthroughs of video games are unique experiences (this is especially true of sandboxgames, for example) and much of the entertainment value derives from the nuance and variation within each game.  People generally enjoy watching people play games well and, if there is an audience for the virtual version of a chess game such as Karpov v Kasparov, should publishers and developers prevent people from filming it? 

 While there are people who profit off Let’s Play videos enough to make a living out of it, the number of people able to do so is estimated to be very small.  If I were to upload a video of a Let’s Play to YouTube, very few people would be likely to watch it and consequently the revenue from any adverts on it would be negligible.  To make substantial sums of money, one really needs viewers in the tens and hundreds of thousands.  The Let’s Players able to generate these quantities have usually built up a following of subscribers, which is not easily done.  With the sheer quantity of LP videos available on YouTube, viewers can take their pick.  As a result, it seems reasonable to assume that an amount of success a Let’s Player has is, to at least some extent, tied to his or her personality and to the entertainment value of the added commentary.  Some viewers will be attracted by the game content, and some will be attracted by the personality of the player.  Sorting viewers of one category from the other, however, would seem to be a tricky proposition. 

 The viewers attracted by the game content are those of particular interest to developers and publishers, and they can be further broken down into two categories: those who are more likely to buy the game as a result of watching the LP video, and those who are less likely to buy the game.  It is this commercial consideration that dictates whether copyright holders allow the videos to stay up.  If viewers are using LP videos as a try-before-you-buy sneak preview, then copyright holders would presumably be happier to let them stay up (and Let’s Players might even claim that their videos are a form of free advertising).  If they are watching the videos as a substitute to actually playing the game, and therefore as a substitute for buying it, copyright holders would likely be more keen to take them down.  Again, sorting one class of viewer from the other does not seem trivial. 

If one imagines the (admittedly unlikely) possibility that viewers purely come for the personality of the players and the quality of their commentary, and that the copyright content is completely immaterial to the viewers enjoyment, one could easily suggest the solution that the commentary be uploaded on its own without the video.  Similarly, for example, to how Rifftrax commentaries are sold to accompany movies.  Unfortunately, unlike films, one cannot simply synchronise the commentary with the start of the game and play alongside it.  Video games are an interactive medium: each experience is bespoke, and depends on the particular input of the player.  The copyright content is therefore integral to the commentary and cannot be separated.  That being the case, it would seem that the solution proposed by developers and publishers such as Nintendo may be an imperfect solution, but perhaps the only practical one if Let’s Play videos are to continue to exist at all.

Thanks, Sean. Now let's find out what our readers think!