I dont understand how can people like watching lets plays instead playing the games, i think its quite pathetic what gaming has become

Nothing has changed. Its just a better, free and more convenient version of the how to/complete guide books that used to be really popular back in the days.

Having a quality userbase is important for a quality game. Especially when Nintendo is so focused on multiplayer. I'm glad they are doing this.

Kenn Lobb's Philosophy on Making games has three rules and one of them is "Making the game fun to watch".

Why would that be the case? Because YouTubers are an important factor in advertising your games and gives them legs. Lets use a few examples

Minecraft, State of Decay, Halo, and Killer Instinct. All 4 grew in popularity off of youtube.  And all sold millions

I dont like let's play or all that other stuff, but millions of people do so its best not to restrict them when they are one of the best forms of advertising in games right now

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with the fact that Nintendo has the right to stop people from posting videos of their games. They have every right to do so. But people are arguing that this goes against the spirit of gaming, which is about sharing your experience. A lot of times people are influenced to play a game when they see others play it. It's a shared experience. By putting any kind of barrier, whether that be monetary or whatever is hurting that shared experience. Did Notch have the right to take down all the Minecraft videos? Of course. Did they decide to take them down or claim money from Let's Players? No, and it helped the game get more exposure.

Also on another point about Youtubers wanting to earn money from their videos. This should be a given. It is their livelihood. Sure they love playing games but at the same time they need to put food on the table. In the case of PewDiePie, yes he's very big and earns a lot of money but not all Youtubers are that big and they barely make do with whatever ad money they get from Youtube and probably some sponsership deals. PewDiePie was speaking generally about all these people who aren't as big. In the end just because you love doing something doesn't mean you can necessarily do it for free, because you do have to put food on the table.

I'm not going to take seriously anyone that really compared games to movies in this regard. Movies are designed to be experienced by watching them, games are not. There are some extremely cinematic games as well, but as far as I'm concerned, it's the devs' problem if they want to call them games instead of movies.

Also, these videos are more helpful than harmful, as they're basically free advertising. No one deserves money for free advertising.

And finally, recording games is more comparable to recording your driving. You don't have to pay the car's manufacturer if you record a video while driving in their car, do you? And you don't have to pay a tool maker if you make something awesome with their tools, do you? At least I think you don't, but if you do, I don't think I want to live on this planet anymore. Anyway, point is, it's a slippery slope which brings us to a situation where you have to pay anyone whose product happens to appear in your product to a large extent.

False! I disagree. Well technically I suppose they do have the right, but I disagree to them having that right.

Free advertisement isn't inherently helpful.

The difference is that when Nintendo sells a copy of a game they are stipulating that they are only selling a reproduction of the game and are retaining the right to reproduce it. The toolmaker is selling the full property right of the tool, including its right as a means of production. The content in let's plays would not be possible without Nintendo's content. A person can easily find and alternative tool manufacturer or build their own tool and produce the same thing thy intended with the other one. In the case of a let's play, sinificantt portions of Nintendo's material are reproduced, and since both parties agreed to the copyright upon purchase through implicit contract, Nintendo has a right to manage that reproduction of its content (a song, character, or cutscene.) 

Well any network that wishes to use teams footage on  their programation to put their comments on top would have to pay the license fee depending on how much of footage they are using...

I'm seeing the continued misunderstanding of how this whole thing works...

Again, NO ONE is stopping the videos from being posted. You can post ALL the gameplay videos of Nintendo games you want. However, IF YouTube's bot matches it successfully to copyright protected content, a content claim is placed that allows ad revenue from the video to go to the entity that owns the rights to the content. No one is "restricting" anything from being posted.

What Nintendo has done is decide to SHARE part of this revenue with the person who posted the video instead of taking it all IF and WHEN YouTube matches it WITHOUT that person needing to go through professional means to OBTAIN this license like many, MANY other publishers require. I'm getting a little irritated by how poorly people understand the system in place. YouTubers who know what they're doing don't simply post gameplay videos knowing this, because this content copyright is exercised by many, MANY more publishers than Nintendo. I, too, barely post gameplay videos because I know it's violating the copyright. Instead, I dance around the Fair Use act by creating game reviews, which fall under educational material as my way of covering games.

The person who mentioned commentators at sports games is mixing up a live broadcast with recorded ("copy") material. Anyone who's into sports might know that if you post a recording of a live broadcast game, it can be content matched to the network that aired it originally, and a content claim will be posted on it directing ad revenue to said network. This is because the network has been licensed and sanctioned to broadcast the footage.

And to someone who mentioned driving cars: you can't actually bare the logo of the vehicle legally and make money off of it. This is why if you look at many advertisements that use cars in pictures on the box or in commercials, the logos of the vehicles are removed. Licensing has to be obtained for manufacturer vehicle usage as well. So you are, unfortunately, still not understanding the issue at hand. People need to stop trying so hard to make videogames some sort of exception to copyright laws, because they are NOT an exception.

For the record, I've begun doing some testing with Nintendo's Creators Program to see how it verifies your registered videos (aside from the text I posted in the OT) just to see how "aggressive" YouTube is being. Though there may be nothing there out of the ordinary, which is what I've gathered so far.

People often point to "free-marketing/ads". Yet, I don't think anyone has any data of this yet. For all we know, lets play videos actually lessens games sell, we can't know for sure, but the most likely case is that it makes no difference at all.