You Better Hold Off On Streaming Your Mario-Themed ‘Minecraft’ Sessions


There’s a reason why it’s so difficult to find Let’s Plays, or playthroughs of your favorite, most recent Nintendo games on YouTube — it’s because Nintendo doesn’t want you to see them (unless they get paid). In a decidedly old-school stance against streamers who want to publish their recorded footage of Nintendo games, the Japanese company would have any Nintendo-related content stricken from YouTube. Last year, they introduced the Nintendo Creator’s Program, which was basically a revenue-sharing system for gaming content creators who wanted to feature Nintendo intellectual property. It hasn’t gone over that well, especially considering the ethical questions that would come up if Nintendo is getting revenue from reviews of their own games.

Now, it looks like the recent Super Mario Bros. skin pack for Minecraft is causing major headaches for gamers. Nintendo’s digital watchdogs are yanking the Minecraft content from all over the web and hitting creators with copyright dings on their YouTube channels. This goes against Nintendo’s promise that the Mario skins, a free add-on for Minecraft would not be affected by their digital policies. 4J Studios, who was behind the add-on, addressed the issues on Twitter.

Nintendo has been behind-the-times since they kept cartridges for the Nintendo 64. Twenty years later, they’ve only recently adopted a (decent) online gaming network for the Wii-U, and despite their great success with the DS and Wii, it doesn’t forgive them for being regressive in their approach to gaming in the current year.

(Via Kotaku)

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