Arguments on why developers might want to prevent streamers from streaming their game

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The other day this set of tweets got a lot of negative attention as the person said that steamers should pay developers for profiting off their work.

I found that the amount and viciousness of negative attention that this got was interesting, and due to my naturally contrarian nature I immediately started thinking about reasonable arguments on why developers might want to exercise their rights in the future and prevent streamers/YouTubers from streaming or making videos of their games. This article presents those arguments.

Lack of interaction

Video games are both an audiovisual and interactive medium. The feel of a game matters as much as its audiovisual components, and often times this feel is completely lost when someone is simply watching the game. A perfect example of this that I remember clearly is Dead Cells. Watching that game for first few times didn't make it seem that interesting to me, but after a few people whose judgement I trusted kept talking to me about it I ended up buying it and immediately, within 5 seconds of playing the game and pressing a few buttons, I understood why people liked it so much. It's a game that simply feels good to control, and for one reason or another, that was lost when you were only watching. Not all games lose most of their feel when they're only being watched, but some do. And this feel extends to things past controls too. For instance, how scared you are when playing a horror game because you're fully immersed and not merely watching someone be fully immersed.

So, if you're a developer who deeply cares about the integrity of your work, and you want to make sure that people only experience your work at its best, then you might want to limit streams/videos of your game, as those inherently remove the interactive component out and make your game a lesser piece of art.

Exposure, free advertisement, popularity

One of the common things people say against requiring streamers to pay is that streamers and developers have a symbiotic relationship. Developers provide the game, streamers provide free advertisement, and both parties win. This is true and factual and how things actually work. I think anyone who doesn't think that it's a mutually beneficial relationship doesn't understand how the Internet works yet. HOWEVER, it is not self evident that every developer values the free advertisement that streamers provide over other concerns. For instance, the concern I mentioned above, the one of lack of interaction, could be valued above free advertisement, and thus the developer would be right in simply saying that streamers can't stream the game, because even though he's losing out on the free advertisement, he's gaining by making sure that his work is only displayed at its best.

Additionally, the developer could say that even though he values the lack of interaction issue above the free advertisement one, for the streamers that really want to stream his game, he will let it happen for a fee. Let's say this fee was $500 which granted a specific streamer the right to stream the game. This would be a valid use of a streamer license, as proposed by Alex. The developer doesn't want to let streamers play his game because he values the integrity of his work more than the free advertisement, but he's willing to be flexible if a streamer that wants to stream it engages in a financial transaction with him. I personally don't really see much wrong with this, and if there was a developer doing it I would think good on him for exercising his rights! :)

Also, it's important to note here that the tweet above says "we already paid for the content", but that's not how it goes. When customers buy a game they buy a license that allows them to do certain things, and profiting off the game generally isn't one of those things. The $500 license I mentioned above would be crafted such that it grants the rights to its buyer to profit off the game via streams, and that's the only way streamers would be allowed to do it. As it is currently, most streamers are simply breaking the law when they stream a game without explicit permission from the developer.

Streamer culture

If the arrogance of the tweet above didn't convince you, streamers and YouTubers are entitled manchildren who don't understand how the world works. In every industry, not just entertainment, when you use another company's products in your business, you're generally required to purchase specific commercial licenses that grants you the right to use that product for commercial purposes. Gaming is the only industry where that norm isn't enforced. Streamers and YouTubers take this for granted because they don't really know what the real world is like. And that's one of the things that bugs me about streamers, they aren't challenged enough.

Twenty years ago people who were obsessed with celebrities were seen as lame. Today, people who are obsessed with e-celebs are taken as normal. The reasons for this are numerous, but it mostly has to do with social media. Today, anyone can be an e-celeb if they try hard enough, so it's obvious the culture won't judge people harshly for liking e-celebs, everyone is aiming for it! Human beings really care about their status so I'd say that this is mostly fine. What isn't fine is the culture that is created around this issue, which is a culture where pathetic manchildren screaming at their screens are rewarded for being as obnoxious and as loud as possible, and if they do anything wrong they immediately have an army of sycophants ready to defend them.

It is perfectly reasonable to say: "I don't want these kinds of people playing my games" and mean it. E-celebs are parasites stealing other people's work for their own profit, and the people who obsess over them are low lives who are the lowest forms of beings on Earth, like insects. A game's community likely benefits from not having those kinds of people around.

But what about Among Us?

Another common argument now is to point to games like Among Us or Phasmophobia and say that those games were made popular by streamers. Yes, they were. I specifically followed Among Us from the very few first streams Sodapoppin did of it and it was very fun to watch. The problem is, those instances are rare. There are hundreds, if not more than a thousand games on Steam that succeed financially every year. And I mean succeed financially. A team of 3 making hundreds of thousands of dollars, a team of 2 making millions, and so on. Hundreds of those stories every year. Yet the vast majority of those games don't get touched by streamers. I would guess that 95%+ of those games don't get played by any streamer, and that 75%+ of them don't have more than 10 videos on YouTube made for them. So what gives, how can there be so many success stories yet most of them are untouched by both streamers and YouTubers? The answer is that in reality streamers and YouTubers largely don't matter. They may carry a game or two here and there like Among Us, but the vast majority of time they're simply parasites who only play whatever's popular so their streams don't lose viewers.

Also, it's important to note that the direct number of sales any streamer or YouTuber produces is almost always low. There have been many posts on gamedev forums and Twitter about how some poor dev finally gets his game played by PewDiePie or xQc but they only see like 100 extra sales that day. How is it possible the biggest YouTuber and the biggest streamer generates so few sales? "Maybe the problem is the game! Yes, the game was the problem.", their sycophants would say. But the reality is that the game wasn't the problem, the problem was that most people aren't watching the streamer for the game, they're watching for the streamer. And so the benefit that the streamer provides is unverifiable, like traditional marketing: https://twitter.com/DUSKdev/status/1319375592752492544. Some developers are OK with this unverifiability, but others aren't, and the ones who aren't should be free to prevent streamers from stealing their work.

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I guess those were the arguments I thought about. Most of them probably won't convince anyone, but it's good for them to be laid out like this anyways. Do I personally care that much about any of these arguments to prevent streamers from streaming my games in the future? No. I really don't care either way. It might seem like this article is somewhat aggressive towards streamers and that I might have contempt for them. But think about it like this: do you feel contempt for an ant? No, you don't feel any particular emotion towards it. You simply crush it when it tries to steal your food.

As a developer it's been very clear to me that if I want people to respect my work and my art I need to assert myself and my will properly. I need to have my terms well defined and I need to make them known. If the time ever comes where issues like this one become more important, I'll have already outlined some thoughts in this direction and I'll be able to state my terms in a clearer manner, such that situations like the ones that happened with Alex don't happen to me.

Finally, I find this piece fitting for this whole drama, as I've been thinking more and more about what I'm doing with my games and what it means to be a creator/artist: