You may have found out from some other source by now, but in as neutral as possible a summary for you and anyone else in your position:

Totalbiscuit is a major professional youtuber on new games, with a focus on indies. His largest series involves him giving his first impressions of newly made games, while playing them for the first time. To judge by the numbers of views these get, many people use them to find out about new games, and whether they are of a good quality or not.

Recently, he was given a copy of Day One: Garry's Incident to produce such a video on. In this video, he was highly critical of the game (which I think most if not all people would agree with). Shortly after he created this video, it became (in tb's words) the most watched critical video on the game. The developer then submitted a copyright claim against him, causing Youtube to automatically take down the video. His justification was that tb did not have the right to make advertising revenue off it.

The video linked at the start of this thread is tb's response to this. A significant part is a large collection of written evidence, mostly from the developer himself, that he did been given permission to make advertising revenue from it. He also discussed the number of other (less popular) videos which had not been taken down, and the fact that a number of highly suspect 'user' reviews appeared on Metacritic in quick succession, using almost identical wording and giving scores of 9-10, suggesting that the developer had posted them. Finally, he talked about the issues with how Youtube does its copyright, essentially giving gaming companies the ability to 'stamp on the face' (his words) of youtubers, especially the more minor ones who aren't large enough to defend themselves, pointing out that this isn't the first time people had been hurt by it. He highlighted a previous issue with Sega (IIRC) blocking high ranked (legitimate) videos, allegedly to make a trailer for their new game appear higher up the search rankings. This is especially an issue, because (he says) Youtube has a rule that if three videos get hit by copyright attacks, the channel is removed completely.

Godspeed You, Cynical Brit!

I can't believe this, but...


I agree with you.

Are you drunk ? :p

YouTube's automated copyright strike system being horrible is old news, just because people don't talk about it that doesn't mean we are not angry. It just isn't anything new. TB being bitten in the ass on the other hand is news, so we talk about that. In a week or two people will have forgotten about it, but we will still be angry at YouTube.

By your definition a DVD menu is a game as well. If you want to now what a video game is you need to look at it predecessors. No, not movies and TV, I mean board games, sports, card games, pinball, pen & paper...

That's a really weird argument. "Obvious problem is obvious, so let's focus on something much less important and completely unrelated"? That's certainly a good way to ensure nothing is ever done about it.

That's not how art works. Art is constantly changing and evolving. You don't define music based on Classical era rules of tonality, for instance. In fact, many progressive artists of various eras were accused of destroying the mediums they were working in.

Art works by constantly re-inventing itself. If it doesn't have room to re-invent itself, it won't progress. It's perfectly acceptable to argue about what will or will not be good for a medium, but it's ridiculous to claim that it's supposed to stick to all the rules of its predecessors. That's like saying novels necessitate a plot, because up until the 20th century that's what they all did.

I'll modify my definition: "interactive media for the purpose of creating an interesting, engaging experience." It's the loosest possible definition that still keeps the one element that sets videogames apart from other mediums: interaction.

At the end of the day, all these arbitrary labels don't amount to anything. This whole argument is just a bunch of nitpicking by people who don't like certain kinds of games and want an "objective" reason to dismiss them. Why on earth should we come up with a definition that excludes some titles, then create a new medium to put those titles in since they don't fit anywhere else? Why not just admit that videogames are evolving and spend the energy discussing what directions are best for the medium instead of creating glass dividers? For Pete's sake, the name "videogame" has been woefully inadequate to describe our medium for years now. We kind of transcended Chutes and Ladders a long time ago.

In other words, I'm all for arguing that games like Dear Ester are going in the wrong direction. In fact, I agree 100% with that statement. But making that point by trying to exclude games from the videogame "club" is not just counter to artistic progress, it's also just plain useless. Dear Ester and Proteus are not going to go away if you give them a new label. The worst that will happen is I'll have to change my blog from 'Videogame Potpourri" to "Videogame and Virtual Installation Potpourri." And frankly, why should I have to suffer? -_-

What the fuck does it has to do with french Canadians ? It all about an advanced state of retardation, like the main point of your comment.

It was ever my intent to make any valid or clever point, just playing the self-righteous for 2 mins to see if you were actually serious.

Did you read the thread? The automated system wasn't involved at any point. The developer used a manual system and reported one particular video. That manual system happens to be heavily skewed in favor of copyright trolls, to the point that youtube is not a secure platform for establishing any kind of business that youtube claims to want to attract. That's a problem, and it can only be tackled to someone powerful enough to make youtube stand up and take notice, just like it took EA to finally shut up Tim Langdell.

And youtube is not the only google product that bones businesspeople. Some indie devs tried to monetize their free games via doubleclick ads. They got accused of breaking TOS and banned from all google products forever, and it happened immediately before a conference where they were scheduled to give a talk on the awesomeness of doubleclick. They could explain themselves via a return webform, but weren't allowed to see the evidence or even to know the specific TOS points they might have violated.

So yeah. The more people call google out on their nontransparency, unaccountability, presumption of guilt, and other assorted bullshit, the better. As for TotalBiscuit, the guy with clear pronunciation who appreciates BIG GLOWY PURPLE SHIELDS is all right in my book.

I should have chosen better wording. What i meant was that a copyright holder can just claim something and YouTube will automatically follow instead of treating each claim on a case-by-case basis.

The fact that they're not newcomers to the industry makes this whole mess even more incredible. Makes one wonder how they survived for the past three years. Would you please explain for the uninitiate of us?

Well, they reversed their claim and slunk off with their tails between their legs. Obviously this particular case being resolved doesn't help address the wider problem.

Personnaly, I'm fine with not hearing his explanation ! ;)