Let's be honest: Nintendo has yet to figure out this whole "YouTube" thing. While most gaming publishers are perfectly fine with letting YouTubers make a bit of money off of videos that use their games (most actually view it as free advertising), Nintendo has always had a more "hands-on" approach — if "hands-on" means claiming all revenue on any video popular enough to show up on the publisher's radar.
True, members of the Nintendo Creators Program still get a cut of the video's revenue — but again, most publishers don't take a cut at all. It's hard to argue for Nintendo's case when the rest of the industry seems to be moving forward when it comes to YouTube and its growing audience of gamers. What's worse is that Nintendo actually seems to be moving backwards in its approach to gaming on the site.
For years, speedruns and ROM hacks have been a popular YouTube subgenre: speedruns feature gamers trying to get through a game as quickly as possible (sometimes assisted by special tools), while ROM hacks can take an emulated version of a game and create something entirely new using the game's engine. They're extremely popular, especially with Nintendo games ... but that may change soon.
For the time being, it looks like Nintendo's YouTube policies are only going to get more and more strict — which, considering the company's current policies, isn't exactly a good thing.
Super Mario Maker is due out on Sept. 11.
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