I'm seeing a lot of buzz over Nintendo's "Creator Program" (and don't worry, this thread isn't intended for the Nintendo section!), and thought I'd chime in on it to see if this will help clarify it for people in general.

There's not as much grey area as people are pretending there is. I've been considering making an entire video over this matter, particularly calling out PewDiePie for deciding against supporting Nintendo games (seriously, how arrogant is THAT?!). It tells me he's not much of a gamer if his priority in choosing to play a game is based on how they handle their ad revenue...

ANYWAY, let's use an example everyone can relate to: movies. Who here thinks it's okay to go to a movie, record the movie, and then upload it to YouTube and make money off of it? I'm pretty sure no one here would think that's okay. Videogames are not so different: recording gameplay and then posting it and making money off of it is a ridiculously self-entitled expectation.

To make the problem a little more clear: Sony and MS willingly spend WAY more money by monetarily incentivizing the licensing and sanctioning the use of footage (with obvious stipulations and limitations) as a way of marketing through end users. Again, this is SANCTIONED, meaning the license has been OBTAINED by a partner to use footage of said game. Nintendo's program here is DOING THE SAME THING: you have to put in your videos either via text or verbally the following -

"I have a license to use Nintendo’s content in this video through the Nintendo Creators Program. This video is not sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo, but any advertising revenue from this video will be shared with Nintendo."

This program is a COST-EFFECTIVE method of basically handing out licenses for end-users to utilize their content without having to go through the PROFESSIONAL channels to obtain a license like you would through Sony or MS (and obviously various other publishers).

In other words, this is all normal practices (albeit Nintendo approaching it rather differently), and people need to understand how content copyrights work before they start mouthing off at Nintendo. The millions of people getting away with Let's Plays of straight gameplay footage are flying under the radar and are essentially lucky they haven't been caught. I think that's mostly because of how hard it is to police millions of people on the internet, though YouTube is clearly trying.

Hope this helps!

A couple of things wrong in this post.

 1. You really think Pewdiepie cares about the 10s of dollars he would not be getting from his non existent Nintendo videos? He's just calling out Nintendo for doing something stupid. Many popular youtubers have done so. And if you actually heard what he said, you would know that he was generally speaking and not for himself.

 2. MS and Sony are not cracking down on youtubers. As least not as hard as Nintendo. They know it's stupid(or at least I hope so). If you followed a few youtubers who had to deal with takedown notices and fought against them you would've seen how they all won in the end because they were in the right. Because their works are transformative, which is the basis for fair use.

3. A notice in front of every Nintendo video like that is a death sentence for any unbiased youtuber. It basically says: "I'm Nintendo's bitch but I'm still totally unbiased even though I'm not paying money to any other game developer out there".

4. This is not normal practice as I pointed out. Video games are an entirely different medium from music or film and as such shouldn't be treated the same way.

Last but not least, nobody is calling out Nintendo for doing something unlawful. It's just incredibly stupid. No one who even went against popular youtubers won in the end. All those hundreds of yens they will be making with this deal won't upset the massive negative publicity and even worse, the missing positive publicity.

This sums it up pretty well. Honestly, even if Nintendo is in the right here why would they wanna do this? They're already struggling to sell their home console and it's software which obviously means that the casual gamer simply isn't interested in their product.

The last thing you wanna do is potentially upset those people even more and for what? A few bucks from lesser known youtubers? The big guys like PewdiePie and TotalBuiscut have already distanced themselves from your games so there isn't much to gain from their fame. I just don't understand it...

To answer a few of your points:

1. That's the whole point: his whole reason for not supporting it IS because of how little money it's worth based on their so-called "policy".  What an odd thing to care about in his situation (and yes, I am well aware of his "statement").  If a person is becoming a YouTuber for the sole purpose of getting paid to play games, they are missing the entire point of the passion of gaming.

2. Again, not Nintendo, YouTube is doing the cracking down because they are following proper content copyright policies.  Another misplaced blame people keep placing on Nintendo when YouTube is acting on its own to protect the content of various entities through their detection bots.  All they need is the data mine either from a verified channel or from the entity itself, and the bots will start auto-matching pixels and sound waves.

3. You assume people are a lot dumber than they really are: bias isn't about what it says in the video description (ESPECIALLY if you consider that I quoted word-for-word above what is required; seeing bias in that is a fanboy reaction).  People will detect bias based on what you post and how you handle it.  It's retarded to think a licensing term is anything but legality.  It's ironic that people are lambasting Nintendo while the other developers (as mentioned) spend MONEY incentivizing these YouTubers (and web sites as well) to cover their games.  The other companies give money to people through monetization to cover their stuff and encourage it.  You want to talk about bias, you have the exactly wrong angle.  Nintendo is simply joining this, but again, in a pretty different manner of doing so that skips the professional necessity of contacting the publisher for licensing agreements.

4. Uhm, yes, entities protecting their copyrights is normal practice in every industry everywhere.  Videogames are NOT an exception like people want to pretend they are.  If Nintendo chooses to protect their content, they are entitled to do so, and it is not "stupid".  Disagreeing with it is one thing, but mocking it is another when many don't even understand how copyrights work.

If nintendo was really interested in free marketing and money from more sales, they would match sony's policy on youtube. Asking for any amount of money from youtube creators's ad revenue is basically asking for them not to make any vids except for "reasons why not to buy a wii u".  

Word of mouth is one of the most influential methods of marketing and it can be one of the most damning things to a console or game. There are more benefits to letting gamers and youtubers make vids about nintendo's games or console than there are cons for them. Yeah yeah, there's the classic defenses, "if they make profit, then it doesn't matter" or "It's their content, they can do what they want" but then again, I wonder how nintendo got into it's current state as a company and as a brand. They can ill afford to alienate any more gamers or their revelence in the future gaming world will be nothing but faint nostalgia.

There's little to no reason to come to nintendo's defense on this because it's a asinine policy. Perhaps, nintendo needs a better prospective of the gaming market and of gamers. 

Most popular youtubers don't just "play the game" for the viewers, they are also commentating the game in an entertaining way. Their funny or thoughtful or professional or commentaries / context are the main reason why they gather their followers, the games themselves are only the raw material for their "shows".

It's similar to sports commentators on TV... why do the TV networks hire people to comment football, baseball, soccer games and many other sports? Every arm-chair-general at home or in the stadium give their opinion of the game for free! Perhaps because they are better commentators and/or give better context than your dad on the couch (more entertaining, captivating, articulate, professional, with more background knowledge or whetever).

Not really the same thing. If you watch a movie on Youtube, you have basically the same experience, just in a lesser quality, but you've still seen the movie. Watching a Let's Play isn't even remotely the same as actually playing a game by yourself. People usually watch those videos primarily for the commentary and certain personalities, and videos that show off good games can serve as an incentive to buy and play them yourself. I'd say it's a little different when content-creators upload full playthroughs without commentary/criticism, but that's still not the same as actually playing a game.

The few times I've enjoyed a Let's Play have been when the video was open in one tab and I was working in another.

Yeah, I also sometimes like to just listen to the commentary instead of actually watching the video.

Nintendo don't have to give you a penny, since you are making money off their game. So I think it's quite fair that they are splitting the revenue