In the past ten years, the Internet has become a place where people can create, comment or express their opinions. Few sites display this as well as YouTube, which has always been a place for people to express their creativity, with many people able to earn a living from making videos. Recently, however, both Microsoft and EA Games have come under fire for bribing YouTube channels to say good things about their products. Microsoft recently sent a message to all people working under the network Machinima, one of the largest gaming networks, stating that anyone who mentioned their latest console, the Xbox One, and said only positive or neutral things about it, would get substantial raises in their paychecks. Once the scandal was uncovered, many well-known YouTubers like TotalBiscut and TheAngryJoeShow reacted by stating that this was opinion-buying, and illegal. These arguments proved to be well founded, as it was discovered that paying someone to say nice things about your products or services is in fact illegal. This has raised concerns that big companies can gain more power over YouTube, and coerce people into saying things they wouldn’t necessarily say otherwise, possibly with a reward promised to them for after their probable praise.
Other notable events include a game developer taking down negative reviews of their game, “Day One: Garry’s Incident,” which, by the way, was panned as being incredibly bad, and YouTube doing nothing, while YouTubers had to take it upon themselves to fight back and tell people themselves that the game was not worth buying. And the “Garry’s Incident”… incident wasn’t the first time YouTube has screwed up thier copyright system. Another notable example was when YouTube took down a video from YouTuber NerdCubed’s channel for having one second of gameplay where he was not speaking over a cutscene, which was marked as a copyright violation, despite the fact that he had already recived clearance from the developer. This was a result of the new copyright ID policy YouTube has enacted, which has an unintentionally strong effect on gaming channels in particular.
On the other side of the idea-buying aisle is game developer Valve. Valve is well known for creating Steam, an app that lets users buy pretty much any PC game in one convenient place, as opposed to searching for them all over the Internet. In addition to hosting a massive virtual community, they harness the community’s creativity through the Steam workshop, a feature that allows users to upload their content to be viewed by the public. Recently, however, Valve has been adding some user-created designs to their games, and in the first week of 2014, Valve paid $400,000 out to community content creators, stating that content creators are what helps keep old games alive, and that more payments will becoming soon. Many people have hailed this as an excellent policy, saying that if users do the work of improving old games, then developers have more free time to create new games.
All these events not only bring up questions about the power of money in entertaiment, but also questions about copyright and people’s rights to create or say things online. With YouTube’s recent copyright ID policy with YouTube threatening to sue people who have already been allowed to post footage of games, and the massive pushback from the YouTube community, many are fearing either Internet censorship or complete control by large companies. YouTube has been taking down videos, and channels, while at the same time allowing developers to bribe or threaten channels for saying bad things about their games. It seems strange that YouTubers are having their opinions bought, but at the same time someone on Steam can make a profit from designing a hat for a character in a video game. Many YouTubers are saying that YouTube is becoming too much like conventional TV, with several large networks running everything, and smaller channels being crushed under the copyright clout of the giant networks. “Youtube is becoming more like TV,” said YouTuber NerdCubed in one of his rants on Youtube’s new policies. “Nobody watches TV anymore! Because everyone is on Youtube!”
Copyright ID law: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en
YouTube’s Copyright Center: http://www.youtube.com/yt/copyright/index.html
