Son, you done kicked off a damn firestorm.
“Fez” game developer Phil Fish learned a hard lesson about attacking sacred internet cows after he posted a negative Twitter stream about PewDiePie’s ability to earn $4 million a year from posting “copyrighted content.”
Said Fish on Twitter:
“YouTubers should have to pay out a huge portion of their revenue to the developers from which they steal all their content. [Ad] revenue should be shared with developers. This should be built into YouTube. Anything else is basically piracy.
If you generate money from putting my content on your channel, you owe me money. Simple as that. If you buy a movie, are you then allowed to stream the entirety of it publicly for people to watch for free? No, because that’s illegal.
Systems are in place to prevent that. But buy Fez, put ALL of it on YouTube, turn on ads, make money from it and that’s TOTALLY FINE. And the developer should in NO WAY be compensated for their work being freely distributed to the world. Right. Makes sense.”
After an avalanche of negative comments from the peanut gallery regarding the incredible benefit and service YouTube gamers provide to game developers, Fish was compelled to change his tune. He tweeted a simple “Nevermind.”
And then later deleted his entire account.
Was he right in the first place though? Not according to developer Cliff Harris of Postitech Games. “I’m not really aware of any games site for whom coverage of your game will result in an immediately noticeable sales spike,” Harris said to Forbes.com, “but I have seen that with a YouTube Let’s Play.”
Yeah, I’d say the free exposure is worth it. Hopefully musicians and filmmakers learn this lesson too. Help YouTubers help you make money, Hollywood. That’s the only way this whole crazy scheme is going to make sense and it saves a hell of a lot of unnecessary lawyer costs.
Share this article so you can say you kickstarted the movement.
Here are more copyright battles:
Bart Baker Celebrates Lorde Parody Victory, Criticizes YouTube Copyright System in Latest Video
Vimeo Launches Copyright Match To Scan for Copyright Infringements
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