Yesterday, Nintendo launched the beta for its new revenue-sharing initiative, the Nintendo Creators Program. By signing up on the program's site, YouTube creators can feature footage from a wide selection of Nintendo titles stretching back to the NES era, and in exchange, up to 40% of any video's ad revenue will go to Nintendo. Of course, it didn't take long for some of the biggest game commentators to speak out against it, the biggest of all being none other than Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg.
In a blog post on his Tumblr, PewDiePie states that he believes Nintendo is making a mistake trying to get money out of folks who are only giving the company free exposure:
[W]hat they are missing out on completely is the free exposure and publicity that they get from YouTube / YouTubers. What better way to sell / market a game, than from watching someone else (that you like) playing it and enjoying themselves?
This is why a tiny one man indie game like Minecraft could grow into a 2.5 billion dollar deal. That’s 2.5 billion… Made possible, largely because of the exposure it got from YouTube!
He then goes on to say that this will simply push Nintendo games to the bottom of the list of software that people will want to feature on their channels.
This is a complicated issue, and there's no telling how Nintendo will revise the terms of its program after the beta period ends. However, when PewDiePie speaks up, people are going to listen. This may put some pressure on Nintendo to respond sooner rather than later.
