Naughty Dog Has Surprising and Maybe Controversial Answer to YouTube Copyright Controversy

by Sohrab Osati | Dec 12, 2013 | 4 comments
Sohrab Osati

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For those not fully tuned in, over the last week, there have been some drastic changes to the copyright policies on YouTube that has caused a rift between developers and gamers. Most of this fiasco started with Nintendo claiming copyright on gameplay video uploaded by YouTubers. Thanks to Google’s weak stance on this, this abused system automatically results on all ads being yanked from the video, which many rely on as a form of income, or a complete takedown of the video. The only chance the YouTuber has is to get a formal permission from the company and submit that to YouTube which is a daunting task on its own.

To make matters worse, developers like Blizzard and Capcom who have no trouble with gamers uploading their gameplay (which in reality helps promote their content for free) saw videos being claimed on their behalf, thanks to Google’s overzealous copyright filters built in. Even videos from famous game commentator Jim Sterling are being taken down because his use of game trailers.

Now, Naughty Dog, the developers behind Uncharted and The Last of Us have spoken up about the YouTube kerfuffle and their answer might not be what fans wanted to hear.

According to Tweets from Naughty Dog, while the team wants to hear back from the community if their videos are being taken down, they don’t like the idea of gamers posting videos which they can monetize. However, with that said, they don’t currently have any specific policies in place to deal with the matter, one way or another.

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While this doesn’t mean Naughty Dog is actively looking to go after YouTubers who are uploading gameplay videos, their response is less than enthusiastic towards those who are doing it. In fact, Naughty Dog has since received lots of responses on Twitter from gamers whose gameplay videos from The Last of Us has been taken down by Google’s new Content ID system that’s baked into YouTube. So much for Google’s claims that they do no evil as clearly, they’ve caved into publisher demand at the expense of the user.

Discuss:

Do you think Naughty Dog should take a stronger stance behind the gamers who’ve helped the studio achieve so much? Or is Naughty Dog’s stance the right one to take?