Guild Wars 2

Arenanet, I love you, and I have loved the game you have created thus far.

However I heard recently that unlike the vast majority of game developers you guys aren’t allowing YouTubers to make money off your videos, and are instead asking people to remove any videos posted of the game that can earn money.

And I honestly can’t say I can thing of a bigger mistake for a growing community.

One of WoW’s strongest aspects has never been it’s gameplay, but it’s community, machinima makers, news shows, sites, guides, pvp casting, anything that game had communities built around it, and that gave it such a strong core that no matter what Blizzard does, or anyone else does, they will continue to have a strong core for years to come.

I personally had little interest in GW2 until I watched videos by TotalHalibut. His channel monetises videos as it is his job to make them, and they are high quality, and very good. And through his coverage of your game, along with the Yogscast videos they posted (which I could easily guess are also monetised.) I was convinced to not only buy your game, but bought the first one too.

I then watched Woodenpotatoes videos, of which he has hundreds that he put together over years, about every shred of lore in GW1. He too monetises his videos, and he deserves it for his hard work. His depth of coverage on the lore made me put in over 450 hours in GW1 and get all the HOM points, plus buy a good bit into your cash shop.

And that is just before launch, after launch communities could be built around this game, animators, guide makers, any number of things that could get people interested and engage them, keep them involved with the game and wanting more. It’s a level of free advertising no company could ever support. It could be a thriving entity that continues to sing the games praises for years after the last commercial airs.

So I suggest to you, Arenanet, let the content creators create their content. Let them earn the ad revenue for the videos they created. You have said many a time that you want to have a strong community core. Then this is step one.

Understand that people spend hours making videos, and for some, it is their living, they can love the game, but, if they can’t eat, then there is no incentive for such creative souls to join our ranks.

Looks to other games if you must, look to RIOT who made it a point to let people monetise videos, look at the strength of their community. Look to WoW and it’s allowance of, and even at times, support of people making content with their game. Look to any successful community built around a single game. You guys know what to do. I just hope it is done before all of those core people move on to something else.

Link to RIOT’s legal mumbo jumbo that protects their rights and allows people to monetise content: http://www.riotgames.com/company/legal-jibber-jabber

I was unaware that ArenaNet was opposed the the monetization of videos and totally agree with the OP. I love watching youtube videos of things like sPvP and totally believe that the casters deserve to be able to monetize their videos.

This subject is quite frankly make-or-break if ArenaNet is serious about making GW2 an esport. They simply cannot stifle the content creators in any way if they ever want the esports thing to happen.

A lot of companies in general don’t seem to realize how much popularity their product can gain by letting people run wild with it on youtube. Look at My Little Pony and how it exploded in popularity. I’m not saying youtube was the reason for that but it did certainty help build a community for “bronies”.

So their issuing take downs on DMCA if a review video is receiving adsense? If thats true then they can guarantee all reviewers will stop reviewing it at all… Bye bye good reviews and free advertising for Anet… I smell NCSofts dirty hands behind this, not ArenaNet If it turns out to be true that is…

That’s an excellent point, this definitely seems more like an NCSoft thing than an ArenaNet thing. Either way, stifling the content creators seems like the worst possible thing for you to do if you want more people to pick up your game.

To Arenanet: Any publicity is a good publicity.

Specially when it’s free and it doesn’t harm you in any way.