Garry's incident, incident - Developer silencing critique

[Deleted]

Welp, guess WildGameStudio just commited commercial suicide

[Deleted]

Youtube's automated copyright claim system is absolute garbage and TB is 100% correct in that video like him or not.

Yeah it is pretty bad but try and look at it from youtubes side. They risk lawsuits every single time someone puts up a video with copyright material, they really can't win this battle, besides with the current tool that takes most of the responsibility away from them.

[Endus]

While I'd say he's in the right about the developer's actions, he isn't right about being censored.

Youtube is a private company. They can take down any video hosted on their site for pretty much any reason they want to, leaving little legal recourse for the person whose video is affected. Free speech laws and the like typically do not apply to private environments; they apply to government squelching of speech.

If a lawsuit had been filed over copyright infringement, and that's what forced Youtube to take down the channel, you could argue it was censorship. Instead, the developers asked Youtube to take it down, fraudulently claiming that there was copyright infringement, and Youtube complied because, for them, it's likely easier to just comply with requests rather than conduct investigations into them.

That doesn't mean you need to be happy with Youtube's decision, and he should appeal the strike against him and seek to have the video re-enabled, but it isn't an infringement of his free speech or something. If he wanted to create his own server and host his own website with his own videos, and cover the cost of his bandwidth and all that, he could. He doesn't, because it's easier to contract that out. The problem with that, is that you're at the whims of those you've contracted with, and the terms and conditions of that agreement, which I'm sure detailed this policy (even if it was applied incorrectly in this particular case, on further review).

[zealo]

In a month nobody will remember this, heck the majority of gamers will never hear this story. If this doesn't come on the news on tv then the devs got nothing to worry about...if it happens to hit tv channels, well then R.I.P.

Smaller indie developers do not really have much room for failures and bad press economically, they have dug themselves a pretty deep grave by doing this as this is on the frontpage of reddit gaming currently with TB's video linked. People might not remember it in a few months true but chances are this studio will be dead by then. That's not even mentioning the incoming lawsuit regarding the false copyright claims.

[Pancha]

We'll just have to wait and see how this pans out. Hopefully it would result in Youtube and Google reviewing their own policies in regards to copyright claims. Silencing critique is common practice, and I for one am against such things to happen. I really do hope TB's video will make it up there and possible make it easier for smaller channels to emerge in the reviewing scene without the help of major networks.

Copyright and its uses has been abused from the time it were invented, so I fear this isn't the last case of such behaviour from developers.

[Deleted]

100% agree with totalbiscuit for once, a company should not be able to silence and remove videos just because they don't like what they are saying.

youtube needs to review their copyright process it seems, didn't know it was that bad.

oh well, that developer just did more damage to their image than TBs original video would have done.

[Fuzzzie]

While I'd say he's in the right about the developer's actions, he isn't right about being censored.

Youtube is a private company. They can take down any video hosted on their site for pretty much any reason they want to, leaving little legal recourse for the person whose video is affected. Free speech laws and the like typically do not apply to private environments; they apply to government squelching of speech.

If a lawsuit had been filed over copyright infringement, and that's what forced Youtube to take down the channel, you could argue it was censorship. Instead, the developers asked Youtube to take it down, fraudulently claiming that there was copyright infringement, and Youtube complied because, for them, it's likely easier to just comply with requests rather than conduct investigations into them.

That doesn't mean you need to be happy with Youtube's decision, and he should appeal the strike against him and seek to have the video re-enabled, but it isn't an infringement of his free speech or something. If he wanted to create his own server and host his own website with his own videos, and cover the cost of his bandwidth and all that, he could. He doesn't, because it's easier to contract that out. The problem with that, is that you're at the whims of those you've contracted with, and the terms and conditions of that agreement, which I'm sure detailed this policy (even if it was applied incorrectly in this particular case, on further review).

Youtubes hands aren't clean in this either. When you're service is supporting peoples livelihoods then a simple investigation is the least you can do. Any reasonable person would have looked at this, put two and two together and seen what Wild Game Studio was doing. It's laziness on their part. Fortunately TB is a part of a partner network that fights for him, but many channels aren't. Look at all the fiasco's with Nintendo content recently.

[Yunru]

As a victim of youtube copyright "protection" system i totally support this cause

Same here...lucky i dont have adds enabled so they cant remove the videos at least . If i enabled it and started geting money i would be banned instant because i criticize too much .

[eschatological]

While I'd say he's in the right about the developer's actions, he isn't right about being censored.

Youtube is a private company. They can take down any video hosted on their site for pretty much any reason they want to, leaving little legal recourse for the person whose video is affected. Free speech laws and the like typically do not apply to private environments; they apply to government squelching of speech.

If a lawsuit had been filed over copyright infringement, and that's what forced Youtube to take down the channel, you could argue it was censorship. Instead, the developers asked Youtube to take it down, fraudulently claiming that there was copyright infringement, and Youtube complied because, for them, it's likely easier to just comply with requests rather than conduct investigations into them.

That doesn't mean you need to be happy with Youtube's decision, and he should appeal the strike against him and seek to have the video re-enabled, but it isn't an infringement of his free speech or something. If he wanted to create his own server and host his own website with his own videos, and cover the cost of his bandwidth and all that, he could. He doesn't, because it's easier to contract that out. The problem with that, is that you're at the whims of those you've contracted with, and the terms and conditions of that agreement, which I'm sure detailed this policy (even if it was applied incorrectly in this particular case, on further review).

Certain rights are imposed on private institutions that have a public service or are readily available to the public. A restaurant like Applebees cannot discriminate about who it seats, but a private membership country club can say "No black person is allowed here." Likewise, TB's free speech can be censored in private (I don't know a really good example of what that would look like), but Youtube could easily fall under the "public domain" and thus be subject to the constitutional right to free speech.

I don't know that such an issue has ever been litigated in re: Youtube, but that's my rough legal analysis. NB: I have no legal expertise in this case, nor do I practice in federal copyright or IP issues at all, and thus what I just said can't be construed as a real legal opinion (hell, my area is more criminal defense). I'm just a guy with a law degree spouting what I remember of constitutional law.

[Mascotte]

Youtubes hands aren't clean in this either. When you're service is supporting peoples livelihoods then a simple investigation is the least you can do. Any reasonable person would have looked at this, put two and two together and seen what Wild Game Studio was doing. It's laziness on their part. Fortunately TB is a part of a partner network that fights for him, but many channels aren't. Look at all the fiasco's with Nintendo content recently.

They used to do that iirc but seeing as they dont make any profit from removing videos that department was rather small.
As a result claims to copyright stuff backed up and it would take days if not weeks for the complained to be processed.
With honest complaints that was obviously way to long.
Thats why they went to the current system, which has results like this sadly.

[Redmage]

A lot of people listen to TB, if they thought his review was going to be trouble for them before, they just made it 100x worse because this is already here, reddit, and every other gaming forum under the sun (and several that aren't) so now the bad publicity is spreading far and beyond TB's influence.

In short, they dun goofed.

[Pancha]

What I really wonder about is how the actions made would influence others within the company that weren't part of this horrendous usage of copyright claim? It would be sad if this ruined the career of a young and aspiring new game developer that just joined the company and did his job. I have no intentions as to research around this company in order to see how many employees they are, but this is rather bad publicity for all those taking part of it. Which is sad if my first statement holds true.

[Mascotte]

What I really wonder about is how the actions made would influence others within the company that weren't part of this horrendous usage of copyright claim? It would be sad if this ruined the career of a young and aspiring new game developer that just joined the company and did his job. I have no intentions as to research around this company in order to see how many employees they are, but this is rather bad publicity for all those taking part of it. Which is sad if my first statement holds true.

Depends on how big the company is.
Major player seems to be their CEO at this point.
If the company is big enough they can just fire him, get another and make a public excuse etc.
Seeing as its an Indie studio that might not be the case, which in turn could cause the end of the entire thing.
Its not even the being wrong/right in this case here; their next released game has to be the best game ever made at this point.

Edit;
This just hit #2 overall on Reddit.
Not /totalbiscuit or /gaming, #2 overall.
The video itself has 50k likes in 2 hours, with viewers most likely being a whole lot more.

[Pancha]

Depends on how big the company is.
Major player seems to be their CEO at this point.
If the company is big enough they can just fire him, get another and make a public excuse etc.
Seeing as its an Indie studio that might not be the case, which in turn could cause the end of the entire thing.
Its not even the being wrong/right in this case here; their next released game has to be the best game ever made at this point.

Seeing as to how they've acted I doubt this indie studio would survive much longer. Hopefully those not being part of the decisions made could move on as if nothing happened elsewhere.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I never cared for TB but copyright infringement hasn't been used properly in the past few years.

[Fuzzzie]

Oof.. wanna read some terrible posts...

http://steamcommunity.com/app/242800/discussions/

[Deleted]

Here is the original video:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x15...ent_videogames

Damn it looks hilariously bad

[Deleted]

Welp, guess WildGameStudio just commited commercial suicide

Why?

Does anyone actually base their gaming purchases based on what TB or some another Youtube commenter says? I most certainly don't, whilst I find some of their videos to be entertaining, I rarely care what a reviewer or "first impressionist" thinks about a game.

[Edge-]

Does anyone actually base their gaming purchases based on what TB or some another Youtube commenter says? I most certainly don't, whilst I find some of their videos to be entertaining, I rarely care what a reviewer or "first impressionist" thinks about a game.

You'd be surprised how influential a lot of the Youtube guys are. And yes, there are people who base game purchases off of what TB or another big Youtube critic/pundit may say about it.

[Deleted]

Why?

Does anyone actually base their gaming purchases based on what TB or some another Youtube commenter says? I most certainly don't, whilst I find some of their videos to be entertaining, I rarely care what a reviewer or "first impressionist" thinks about a game.

Neither do i, but after i watched the original TB video, i have to say that i have never seen such a buggy crap before. I would never buy that game.