Both sides have every right to do that. You see an ad. You have the right to ignore it. Even though that ad/product took millions to make. Just like your game sale. You decided if you wanted the game from a written article, on a website. And that site is making money from that article. Same process.

It doesnt MATTER that it is 'arguably' free advertising. It's their game that someone is potentially experiencing for free and money is being made off their hard work.

Microsoft didn't sign an advertising deal, so they can claim all the money, since they could legally say "This video made ad money because people watched it for the game we published"

Would PewDiePie get 2 million a year if every video was purely his dramatic reactions? No, no one would watch that, so it's both the reactions, and moreso, the game, that people tune into.

And even morals, ethics and code aside, at the end of the day, a game has the same legal rights as a movie. Microsoft have chosen to pursue those legal rights, and hell, smart of them, no one is gonna not upload halo 5 gameplay because microsoft are taking a percentage.

Those are coverage, those are ads. This is gameplay of a game someone worked on and spent their own money making and publishing. I'd rather reward the maker of the gamer than the person who plays the game and records their face, and clearly so do microsoft.

Well this argument won't really be cleared, till someone goes to court and play throughs become fully sanctioned by fair use, or not.

you know that legally you are right. Some publishers are smart enough to let it happen though because they know the benefits. EA and Activision prime examples. Ubisoft maybe too. Sony are all for it and I've personally dealt with people from SOny looking to get YouTubers to play Planetside 2 for them when it was in beta. EA paid all the COD guys to come and play Battlefield 4. 

End of the day they have every right to claim these vids or remove them but they will only hurt themselves. 

EDIT:

The end game is nobody makes vids about "insert game". Game loses a lot of hype and publicity. Other games prosper. Money from claimed videos dwindles due to lack of new uploads from popular youtubers. Game sells less. 

Microsoft went to youtube, asked to be included in the split, youtube agreed, thats enough for them.

Didn't know this. That is a lot more fair than what Nintendo does. But I still want a real descison on play videos.

so what is the point of the video sharing features then if they can't be shared on youtube? edit: without all of these weird rules

google take 45% of the revenue off the bat. SO they have plenty of room for sharing some of that. 

Irrelevant. Just because you have the legal right to do something or demand something, doesn't mean it's always in your best interests. And if something is not in your best interests and you do it anyeway that's your business unless it is causing harm to someone else. Then it becomes morally and ethically questionable. In all likelihood the net effect of LPs and similar videos is financially positive for publishers because the sales that are generated from views are greater than the sales lost from people deciding they got everything they wanted from passively watching a full LP playthrough. If it is assumed that sales are positively affected by Youtubers then your argument holds no water. The rights holder IS getting their money for it.

You know when corporations sue each other for patent and copyright violations the courts normally throw the cases out if the plaintiff can't actually demonstrate harm. In this case it's likely the corporations are in fact benefitting from what youtubers and streamers are doing. Imagine a publisher taking a youtuber to court, and the youtuber being able, though some sort of (hypothetically possible) complex analysis to demonstrate that the net effect to the publisher was a $1000 increase in game sales revenue? The judge would tell the publisher to GTFO of their court and stop wasting the court's time.

It's a slightly different story if a youtuber is trashing a game. People who want to tell the world a game is a PoS have to be very careful how they use any copyright or trademark material because it is a fairly simple thing to be able to claim that the rights holder suffered harm from the unauthorised use of their IP for the purposes of turning people away from the game. Of course rights holders have to be careful of throwing stones because  there is an entire industry (reviewers) built around critiquing games, and publishers give reviewers reasonable license to use game content in reviews without demanding editorial control over a review. The calculus being they take the rough with the smooth and in general having reviewers is better for sales than not having reviewers.

Reviewers make their money from other people's IP just like Youtubers. Do game publishers demand a cut of the ad or subscription revenue reviewers make from reviewing games? 

And yes, you can create and post videos very simply and cheaply. But you won;t become a successful Youtuber and be able to give up your day job if you just post videos of you playing a game. Youtubers who gain millions of subscribers are not lazy arses who are totally living off the hard work of others.