YouTube Creators Continue to Take Issue With Nintendo’s Policies

YouTube content creators have had a contentious relationship with Nintendo due to their strict Creators Program guidelines, and the release of Super Mario Odyssey has given these YouTubers another chance to air their grievances.

A review for the platformer from popular YouTube personality Dunkey was marked as including copyrighted content, thus disallowing Dunkey to receive any advertising revenue for the video. Dunkey, already realizing that the video would be demonetized before uploading it, took to social media to express his anger and Nintendo’s apparently draconian policies, in classic Dunkey fashion.

fuckin dumbass nintendo pic.twitter.com/DvltKLm1Cc

— dunkey (@vgdunkey) November 5, 2017

This isn’t exactly a new development, with content creators such as “Angry” Joe Varga expressing anger all the way back to 2015 for similar reasons.

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

But what is surprising to content creators is how prevalent these conflicts still are. Nintendo recently updated their policies in a way that prohibits their Creators Program partners from livestreaming their videogames. Professional YouTube creators such as Dunkey and Angry Joe are put in a tough position with Nintendo gaining most, if not all of the advertising revenue. Per Polygon, Ali Moiz, CEO of analytical firm Streamlabs, explains that these policies from companies such as Nintendo are pushing content creators over from YouTube to streaming website Twitch.

It is unclear whether Nintendo will publicly address these issues in the near future.