Arenanet's stance on Youtube content ID

#1 - Dec. 12, 2013, 11:21 a.m.

Over the last couple of days we’ve seen controversy erupt over youtube’s use of a content ID system which seems to flag and ‘hijack’ video content (such as reviews, live stream recordings and the like) which contains excepts from games.

The content creators then have to go through a dispute mechanism to try to reclaim the ownership of the content they created.

http://kotaku.com/youtube-copyright-chaos-continues-game-publishers-to-t-1481517758

A few games companies have come out and published their stance on it (such as blizzard,capcom and square enix) while others have adopted a ‘sort it out amongst yourselves’ approach

Since fan content creation (such as SPvP/livestreams etc) is such a key part of game awareness and community participation I’m wondering does Arenanet have a position on youtube’s content ID system and how content producers should go about resolving any content flagged up.

Note this isn’t a demand, calling out or anything like that just a player asking a question about an area of concern

Stephane Lo Presti

#28 - Dec. 13, 2013, 6:39 p.m.

Hi everyone,

During the last few weeks, there have been a lot of discussions about YouTube and the hot topic lately has been policies about posting to YouTube video content that contains videogame assets. This situation is continuing to develop and we’ll be monitoring YouTube changes, but we’d like to provide some clarification on the matter of our policies.

To use assets (e.g., screenshots, footage) from our games, any content creator needs to comply with the Guild Wars 2 Terms of Use that are detailed here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-content-terms-of-use/. These rules are pretty explicit and haven’t changed since we put them together. They define what content ArenaNet considers out of line. Content creators are not permitted to use our assets to create a commercial product and use of our assets for non-commercial purposes is permitted. Monetizing a fan-created Guild Wars 2 video on YouTube via its partner program is generally not against these Content Terms of Use, just as serving advertising (Google Ads, for instance) on a fansite is not against the Content Terms of Use.

We actually support people sharing their experiences with our game, such as Let’s Play, guides, reviews, or other types of fan videos on YouTube. We generally do not take any action against YouTube videos using our game assets. We will investigate what’s happening with the PlayNC claims. You can contact us at [email protected] if you have further questions. We’re also going to start reviewing our policies to make sure they’re clear on where we stand regarding content creation. Keep in mind that this will take quite some time since it involves legal reviews.

Thanks a lot for supporting the Guild Wars 2 community by creating awesome content to show your experiences with the game!