YouTube is demanding that users who make money by posting videos with Nintendo products must split their revenue with either Google and Nintendo, or risk surrendering it all (by copyright claim) to Nintendo if the game in question isn’t on a supported list as part of the Nintendo Creators Program. Keep in mind that Google automatically keeps 50% of all ad revenue, so the remaining 50% would be divvied up between Nintendo and the Nintendo Creators Program YouTube channel owner, 40-60. This could likely chop a YouTuber’s income by nearly half. If you register your entire channel with the NCP, however, your share of ad revenue would increase to 70% of the remaining 50% that’s left over after Google’s cut.
Two years ago, Nintendo made major copyright claims on videos on YouTube that included footage from their games, CBC News said. “As part of our on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media channels in an appropriate and safe way, we became a YouTube partner and as such in February 2013 we registered our copyright content in the YouTube database,” the outlet reported that Nintendo said in a statement at that time.
Now they want in on the streams of ad revenue that is currently being siphoned to the YouTubers who are using Nintendo products in their self-made videos.
According to CTV News, Mississauga, Ont.-based Nic Truong says he will likely lose a hefty chunk of the revenue he makes from his YouTube channel under the alias “Tetra Ninja” in 2010, which he now makes his living on YouTube by showing others how to play. “It’s a full-time job,” Truong told CTV’s Canada AM on Tuesday. He currently has approximately 850,000 YouTube subscribers. “It’s a video game company that represents the entire industry,” meaning he can’t turn his back on the company’s many popular marquee brands, including Mario, the Legend of Zelda, and Pokemon. “I thoroughly love those franchises and I will continue to play them.”
