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[Felix Lighter]

I imagine the YouTube copyright claim system will basically ultimately make it impossible to make a living being an honest content creator with integrity. These publishers completely control who and how these people monetize their content. So utterly disgusting the whole thing is.

 

[IvorB]

Ah ha ha ha!!! And EA comes through to take things to the next level. Glorious. Isn't that worst company vote just around the corner now .

"Your assignment YouTuber, should you chose to accept it..."

 

[jet1911]

Glad I don't watch anything on youtube except gameplay videos.

 

[Nymphae]

This is unreal, honestly.

I don't understand how this legal shit works. If it's illegal to take money for videos without disclosing, how can they write a legally binding document that asks you to do just that?

Glad I don't watch anything on youtube except gameplay videos.

Same here.

 

[jaypah]

Lmao, yes drag those skeletons out of those closets! It's about to be a full on snitch fest. Like I said before, I wonder how much of the industry it would be "safe" to buy from if everything got laid on the table?

 

[Paches]

I wonder how long these companies have been doing this for

 

[Marc]

I don't get why the NDA is important, unless EA is requiring an advertisement notice being put up and the youtuber is also requiring it... it is a bribe. Plain and simple.

Whether they talk about the bribe or not is a matter of how easily we can get to the truth of how corrupt someone is.



MS and EA, that special partnership. Who else to come?

 

[JABEE]

I imagine the YouTube copyright claim system will basically ultimately make it impossible to make a living being an honest content creator with integrity. These publishers completely control who and how these people monetize their content. So utterly disgusting the whole thing is.

Yes. I didn't catch on to it until Boogie explained the mechanism in his video. They all should be reported. It's slime ball business tactics.

 

[NoPiece]

The bolded is the reasoning given by Machinima for the MS stuff; it also looks simiilarly bad.

The main difference is that we have seen the Machinima promotions for Comicon and E3 where the disclosure is present. The Microsoft promotion specifically had the disclosure removed, which looks particularly bad.

There is nothing wrong with a broad NDA about the program as long as there is a specific "sponsored by" notice within the content. There needs to be more info on the EA deal, but again, I agree it is looking as shady as Microsoft.

 

[spirity]

lol, this isn't new

Its new to me. Well, I always felt that some youtubers would get given free games. But I didn't think it was very widespread. But this, coupled with the Msft thing, means that its a lot bigger than I ever realized.

 

[Parakeetman]

I wonder how long these companies have been doing this for

Am sure its been going on forever. The only difference is technology and folks lack of caution with how information sticks around the internet makes it a lot easier to uncover things and bring it into the spotlight fast.

 

[SegaShack]

I can't say I'm surprised by this. As I mentioned in the MS thread about this, this has been going on for a long time, people on youtube getting paid to showcase games. Even some indie devs are known to give someone money and early access to their game to help grow a consumer base.

 

[Silex]

EDIT:

Nevermind, probably misread the numbers in the op

 

[Sadist]

Our first scandals;

I'm liking 2014

Guess that worst company of America award is in the bag

 

[Metroidvania]

Although it's probably too late and it might have already been mentioned,
Shinobi, you do know that posting the exact numbers of the views your guy got is a bad idea, right?

The numbers posted are apparently the payout across all channel/individual video views, not one specific person.

Edit:

The views are for total across all Youtubers, not just one.

 

[Kevtones]

Hey mods, if I make a thread exploring the virtues of NeoGAF over at IGN - how much money will I get for every 1,000 hits?

 

[Silex]

The numbers posted are apparently the payout across all channel/individual video views, not one specific person.

Edit:

Yea, took me a while to realize that getting 6 million views for a NFS clip isn't very reasonable, lol

 

[Costia]

Hey mods, if I make a thread exploring the virtues of NeoGAF over at IGN - how much money will I get for every 1,000 hits?

probably 1 dogecoin

 

[Mully]

There's no question that LevelCap, the Battlefield YouTuber took part in this. Really messed up.

I don't think I can take any YouTube video game centric channel serious again.

 

[Jomjom]

This is unreal, honestly.

I don't understand how this legal shit works. If it's illegal to take money for videos without disclosing, how can they write a legally binding document that asks you to do just that?



Same here.

If contracts were always 100‰ legal there would be no need for civil courts for the most part as people who breach always claim that the contact was faulty in one way or another. It's all down to interpretation.

 

[DedValve]

$10? Holy cow!

BF4 was an amazing title, haters gonna hate because ps4 users are just jealous that their console can't handle all the data being processed by the Xbox One cloud!

Spoiler

I'm a disgusting sellout but I can drown my shame with some good old fashion retail therapy.

 

[Dolor]

I'm reading the contract now and it is saying participants may not disclose details on this program to the public.

Holy fuck. So much astroturfing and crap like this. Hard to really trust anyone with this stuff.

 

[stonesak]

This is crazy. Companies need to be held accountable. Burn the industry to the ground and start over.

 

[megalowho]

I'm glad this stuff is getting exposed to the public. Even if it's common practice, it's scummy common practice without proper disclosure and the companies and YouTubers that rely on it deserve to be shamed.

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

Hey mods, if I make a thread exploring the virtues of NeoGAF over at IGN - how much money will I get for every 1,000 hits?

free gaf gold

 

[Mudkips]

Although it's probably too late and it might have already been mentioned,
Shinobi, you do know that posting the exact numbers of the views your guy got is a bad idea, right?

You'd have to trawl through Youtube and find all videos within a certain percent above those numbers (since they could have only gone up since that screenshot was taken), then cross reference the user names and find the most likely user name (or user names) covered by those screenshots.

I can't find shit for the Need for Speed Rivals screenshot. There's one video that comes up with over 6,000,000 views when searching for the required title string ("Need for Speed Rivals"), and it's from the official NeedForSpeed account. I also tried searching for the mandatory bit.ly address. Can't find shit.

Even if someone does manage to get around Youtube's absolutely useless search and find out the account name (or account names) behind those videos, so what? I say it's a good thing for us to know about, and the people involved should be disclosed, as is required by law.

The numbers posted are apparently the payout across all channel/individual video views, not one specific person.

Edit:

Well there you go. You can find some shit using the titles and bit.ly addresses. Most of the shit I found for Need for Speed Rivals was in Spanish.

 

[KoopaTheCasual]

This is unreal, honestly.

I don't understand how this legal shit works. If it's illegal to take money for videos without disclosing, how can they write a legally binding document that asks you to do just that?



Same here.

Which is why a lot of us on GAF, and even TotalBiscuit are left scratching their heads about this. From what we know, it sounds completely illegal. Even with an incredible lawyer, it seems like it would be exceedingly difficult to find that this is in any way lawful.

And also the fact that this is a standing practice through Machinima, at least through EA and Microsoft, is baffling. Another strange fact is that TotalBiscuit has claimed that he actually never saw an NDA that directly went against FTC regulation, forbidding you from disclosing the promotion (maybe I misheard in the video?).

Just a lot of WTFs abound, today.

 

[joesiv]

$10? Holy cow!

It is a lot of money, now that I know CPM is for 1000 views... looking at the search results for a couple of those EA games, and many youtubers get 25,000+ for a video of say battle field, or even NFS. $250 for a video. Popular videos if the timing is right, can get 500,000+, that's $5000? Wowsers, I'm in the wrong business lol...

But on the other hand, man no wonder games cost so much to make, marketing budgets are crazy!

 

[Finalizer]

Seems natural that EA wouldn't be one to be outdone in this regard, eh.

 

[Ombala]

3rd year in a row

 

[FStop7]

Heay guys, heave you heard about how much beatter Battlefeald 4 has gottean?

Perheaps you'd carea to stop by my Youtubea channeal for furthear discussean.

 

[amorbis]

From what I understand, the EA/YouTube deal doesn't violate the FTC guidelines. YouTuber users can't talk about about the financials or specific agreements between YouTube and EA, but its never said they can't talk about the fact that EA is sponsoring the content--which would be illegal.

 

[prwxv3]

I wish we could get company duo category for worst company. MS and EA deserve it together

 

[bryehn]

probably 1 dogecoin

That's about $25, pretty good CPM if you ask me.

 

[shungokusatsu]

EA just guaranteed their 3rd consecutive win for worst company.

Edit: Beat, ha

 

[KoopaTheCasual]

From what I understand, the EA/YouTube deal doesn't violate the FTC guidelines. YouTuber users can't talk about about the financials or specific agreements between YouTube and EA, but its never said they can't talk about the fact that EA is sponsoring the content--which would be illegal.

Idk dude. This sounds pretty black and white:

You agree to keep confidential at all times all matters relating to this Agreement and any Assignment including, without limitation, the Details and Compensation listed above.

You understand that You may not post a copy of this Agreement or any Assignment or any terms thereof online or share them with any third party without EA's prior written consent. You agree that You have read the Nondisclosure Agreement (attached hereto and marked as Exhibit A) and You understand and agree to all of terms of the Nondisclosure Agreement, which are incorporated as part of this Agreement.

They're not allowed to mention that the agreement exists.

 

[shinobi602]

From what I understand, the EA/YouTube deal doesn't violate the FTC guidelines. YouTuber users can't talk about about the financials or specific agreements between YouTube and EA, but its never said they can't talk about the fact that EA is sponsoring the content--which would be illegal.

No, the contract specifies "all matters" of the agreement be kept strictly confidential.

 

[EL CUCO]

Next-Generation consoles deliver

 

[NullPointer]

EA just guaranteed their 3rd consecutive win for worst company.

It was already guaranteed. They're just putting in their pre-order for the 2015 running now. Because of all the overflow. There's so much bullshit we've run out of warehouse space to store it all.

 

[nib95]

Fucking EA and Microsoft, trust them to be the one's at the forefront. Truly the worst two companies in Gaming right now.

 

[Drencrom]

$15 per thousand views? EA sure is generous when it comes to bribing people

So, if I do it for Titanfall, I get money from both EA AND MS? Oh boy!

lmao

 

[amorbis]

No, the contract specifies "all matters" of the agreement be kept strictly confidential.

Couldn't you say that "all matters" of the agreement only refers to the documents? It's still not clear if it prohibits disclosure of EA simply sponsoring the content, which would imply the agreement but not say it specifically.

 

[Zyae]

Our first scandals;

I'm liking 2014

Guess that worst company of America award is in the bag

If you think that EA is the worst company in America you are delusional.

 

[Fox_Mulder]

I feel bad for having bought Fifa 14

 

[nib95]

$15 per thousand views? EA sure is generous when it comes to bribing people

lmao

Even $10 is high, but $15….man EA really want that positive Madden coverage.

 

[Corronchilejano]

The problem isn't that they can't, it's that they must. Even if they couldn't disclose the details themselves, most videos never, EVER talk about said agreements, not even a "This video is sponsored by EA Games as a footnote," which according to US law (and as I've read, UK law) is an obligation.

 

[7DollarHagane]

The fact that this shit is so well developed and established means its been going on for a long time. I think there have been "media" outlets that have similar schemes like this ongoing with certain publishers.

 

[Wickerbasket]

All this stuff seems super shady.

I mean, I'm sure we all suspected stuff like this was happening but the fact there's now evidence leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[oxidax]

Doesnt matter. Still gonna win worst company.

 

[KoopaTheCasual]

Couldn't you say that "all matters" of the agreement only refers to the documents? It's still not clear if it prohibits disclosure of EA simply sponsoring the content, which would imply the agreement but not say it specifically.

I feel like you'd have a really hard time arguing that language in court, and kind of lobs it up to the prosecution.