Unlike music and movies, watching on Youtube is not consuming the content. Even showing a playthrough of the game isn't devaluing the game, it's promotional. The Youtubers adding commentary own that commentary and should be able to be paid for it, with the game image as fair use. Fair use CAN apply to commercial content. The law needs rewritten to protect those who make new art using game footage - be that Let's Play, machinma, commentary of professonal competitive video games, or anything else that substantially transforms the original work.

It could be argued that any video that demonstrates how to play a particular level of a game diminishes the games value by giving away the means to complete the level. A publisher makes money off of the sale of game guides,. So the fact that someone is making money without the publisher getting a piece of it is gonna be a problem.

A publisher stating that they have ownership of content doesn't mean that content necessarily gets taken down. It merely means that the content owner will be asserting its rights. If someone posts content it doesn't approve of then they have the means and right to pull it down.

For example, someone publishing how to mode a game.

Those guys from EAsportsfootball should be sued, trying to explain how to play the game...

Fair use only alows small portions of content to be used for review and educational purposes. You can't show an entire movie or game on youtube just because you talked through it.

To make things clear, since we're talking about EA. Watch this and then explain me why Marius Hjerpseth doesn't deserve a single penny for his skills and time if the video gets enough views (even if he is a Man U fan, Kowenicki):

Again, playing a game is different than watching it. For "fair use" purposes, absolutely none of the content is being used, really.

Even if that were true, it doesn't matter. Fair use only applies to reviews and education and you can only use a small sample. By sample I mean like a minute or two of the whole. A small percentage.

It doesn't matter if the interactive experience isn't being transmitted.

What you're saying would be like taking just the audio of a movie and playing it on the radio. Y ou can't do that without permission.

Honestly people, regardless of if you like watching other people play full games on youtube or not, if the content owner is against it than it's not allowed.

It doesn't matter if you are making money or not.

Legally, no, but morally? Yes.

But it's not exactly the full content, is it? You can argue that the output of the game is the result of user generated input, so it's always a dynamic result, unlike a movie which is static.

It's like saying Adobe owns the rights to all movies edited in Adobe Premier.