Nintendo Affiliate Program

In the last few days I've been pretty busy with university stuff, so please excuse me for not talking about this sooner.

So many of you probably have heard about this Nintendo affiliate program, but allow me to give a brief recap.

A short time ago Nintendo launched the Nintendo Affiliate Program, which allows Youtuber to become licensed Nintendo partners. With this the Youtuber don't have to worry about contend strikes anymore, as their contend is now officially licensed by Nintendo. Nintendo also gets the right to claim some percentage of the revenue generated by your Nintendo centric videos for themselves. These are 40% if your channel also hosts non Nintendo content and 30% if you host only Nintendo content.

So let me state this directly. I don't have anything against Nintendo trying to claim some money from Lets Plays. You earn money with their content after all. 40 and even 30% seem a bit high though. I thin 10-15% revenue share would be fair.
But only on lets plays. Reviews and other content should and are protected under the fair use clause and Nintendo has no right to claim anything on such videos.

And here start the problems of this service. Not only do you agree to share revenue with Nintendo, but you also hand them the rights to use your videos in any of their promotions and, more important, you agree to follow their strict rules.

These rules encompass the standard stuff, like not producing any adult themed content, but the important part is the vagueness of the rules. What goes and goes not isn't clearly stated in the contract, but is up for Nintendo to decide. These vagueness is a big problem. For example Nintendo reserves itself the right to change the rules anytime and to decide every month how much of the revenue generated by your videos is actually given to you.

The next huge problem is that Nintendo forbids its partners to talk about the program or even hint that they are affiliated with Nintendo. In the light of other recent (and still ongoing) discussion about ethics and corruption in video game coverage, this is just plain stupid.

And the last point is that Nintend reserves the right to review all videos before they're uploaded and change them if they deem it necessary.

To put it simply the Nintendo Affiliate Program is a huge blow to the freedom of speech. Like so many times before Nintendo shows that they're not really getting on with the times. To put it bluntly. This is a truly stupid move from my favorite video game company. Trying to control the flow of information has never worked before and I hope it doesn't start to work now. That's why I hope that many people stand up against this program and tell Nintendo their view on it. Because as fans we should be first to point out mistakes. A true fan is also the harshest critique of his product of choice.

Sadly I haven't seen much backlash so far. Yes some notable Youtubers like Totalbiscuit, PweDiePie or Jim Sterling have spoken against it and many media outlets have at least ran one story about it, but from the general public, from the customer there has been nothing so far. Many remain silent on the topic.

Following GamerGate discussions one can often read that they will deal with Nintendo at a later time because they need to keep concentrating their efforts on their SJW enemies and sites like Kotaku and so on.
And while I support the stated goal of GamerGate and the idea behind it, I don't think that we should overlook Nintendo. The program is still in its Beta-stage, so we still have time to force some fundamental changes, because as it stands now it is an attack on freedom of speech. Nintendo will decide which content is shown and which is shunned. And if they're successful with this then other companies will surely follow suit.

In the end a content creator should be able to make money with his chosen profession. A review of Super Smash Bros. should be able to create revenue under fair use.
With its program Nintendo tries to bind creators to itself and make them financially dependent. And that is just bullshit.

+ Nintendo doesn't even need to pull such shit. They're games are nearly always top notch.

TL;DR

Nintendos Affiliate Program is bullshit. In its current iteration it's a blatant try to censor and control opinions. I think it's ok for Nintendo to receive a small share or revenue (10-15%) for lets plays, but reviews and other content falls under fair use.
As fans we can't let such a blatant try of censoring free speech stand and should demand a change in the policies because better games coverage benefits us all.

and as always

Thanks for reading