Apologies for the harsh language there, but you may (or may not) have noticed that Games Asylum’s YouTube page has been permanently disabled.
Occasionally we’d get the odd e-mail from EA and other publishers via YouTube claiming copyright on videos that we uploaded, but they didn’t mind us uploading them. And why would they? We’re giving their games publicity for free. Heck, the press are always sending us links to videogame trailers so that we can potentially feature them on this site.
But earlier this week a year old video of the WWE Vs Smackdown trailer was removed, because the WWE claimed full ownership and copyright violation. Today I received a message stating that the Game Asylum account has been disabled, thus losing everything that was uploaded - over 300 videos, including some personally taken in Tokyo.
Last time I checked the channel had over 3 million video views. Obviously YouTube aren’t bothered about the loss.
There are 19 comments
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It’s amazing that some publishers are so against free advertising…
That single Youtube video brought 250,000 people to look at a trailer for a shitty WWE game. Presumably some were influenced by the video and went on to buy the game. Free advertising!
Maybe if you sent the WWE an invoice ($0.1 per view? That’s a bargain, TV adverts would be 10 times that… so $25k then?) they’d look at it differently. Except, this is the WWE we’re talking about…
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wwe rocks
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You had a youtube channel? Well, do let know when (if?) you have a new one up…
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Youtube will delete your account after so many copyright claims are made against you. WWE was just the last straw I guess. They make a claim over anything that has their name in the filename BTW, that is how they get a lot of people. They are also manually checking but anything with WWE or Summerslam, etc in the filename is automatically flagged.
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It’s typical of the WWE & their stranglehold of perceived copyright violations. They never request that people remove videos from Youtube, instead they issue copyright claims like a bunch of faggots instead of men. Its not like it was a video of a GOOD wrestling game. Smackdown 2008 was a piece of shit & a complete step backwards for the wrestling game genre. The storyline was frustratingly linear, to the point that I felt like I was playing the first Smackdown on my PS1, but with shiny graphics. The control scheme was horrible and there was the fact that most wrestlers couldn’t use moves that they are associated with because of the completely retarded new fighting styles. The old fighting styles worked because they were stat based, the new fighting styles DO NOT WORK because they make some characters unplayable (ex. Rey Mysterio), some unbeatable (Powerhouse guys like Batista, Triple H). All in all it played like a rushed, Broken game.
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One question: were those videos official trailer or was it captured game footage? I’m not a lawyer but it seems to me like fair use covers capturing footage for reporting / journalistic purposes.
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Yea, WWE was bad to do what they did, they go WAY overboard trying to “protect” their footage. I agree with alex076, if it’s journalistic it’s allowed. Like I can’t sell tshirts with WWE on them, but I can sure as hell write about them, and include pictures/video that relates.
I’d be bitching at youtube, and finding a new home to host your vids.
I guess you were missing the legal bullshit. “All images and names are copyrighted…..”
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Hell atleast you got a message. I logged on one day and my account was deleted, with no message in my inbox in my various emails telling me why it was deleted.
I suspect its because I had an EBA video up. The same thing happened when Youtube deleted some of my Ouendan videos after claims by JASRAC.
Fuck Youtube
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It was just some gameplay footage of the last WWE game on Wii. I don’t see how sites like Gametrailers can have videos of countless games that you can only watch but also download, but when we upload them onto YouTube they get taken down and we get a slap on the wrists?
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@Matt:
Gametrailers is a huge corporate website (MTV Networks) while you have a small blog with few readers. Learn to deal with it, as long as you’re a small website no one cares about you and you get treated like shit. I know this sound harsh, but this is how videogame “journalism” (or any journalism at all) works. -
@Anton
While GA is “a small blog”, we have;
a) Been around for many years (since 2000) and were at one point almost moderately large.
b) We’re in regular contact with all of the publishers and PR guys, and THQ (who publish the WWE games) regularly send us review code and game trailers/footage.
So, especially taking point B into account, it’s all “a bit bollocks”.
But, the WWE didn’t remove the videos from our website. They removed the videos from Matt’s Youtube channel which was named the same as the website. There’s a difference - Youtube will treat Matt’s channel the same as any other personal channel and delete any copyright infringing videos (bit stupid for game promotion though), whereas if the WWE had sent us an email asking us to remove said videos from our own website, we’d have just ignored them.
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let me see hear it`s wwe property and video not your property i say go wwe and fuck you guys for stealing their shit
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@ Mike
THQ themselves (publishers of the WWE videogames) regularly send us game review code and video trailers/footage, with the explicit purpose of us using them to promote their games.
Little fucking ironic that for doing so (albeit on Matt’s Youtube channel rather than directly on this website) the WWE make a legal request.
(Though obviously, as your argument was basically “fuck you guys” I doubt you’ll actually make a reasoned, intelligent response any time soon.)
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Why is everybody so quick to defend WWE? It was any other company everybody would (probably) be on our side.
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Considering the video in question that was removed and got the channel banned had 250,000 views (quite a lot by any standard!), I think the WWE shot themselves in the foot somewhat.
Yes, it’s “just some Youtube channel”, not a large corporate backed entity, but a quarter of a million people is a significant number that most sane companies would gladly pay to have for an audience. From experience I know that many PR and advertising firms consider reaching 100,000 people for an online campaign an great success, and pay tens of thousands of pounds for such publicity.
Heck, EA happily spent something like $40,000 this week just on petrol to create a ’scene of panic’ in London as a publicity stunt, just in the hope of getting the name of their game on the news and some websites. And if the (arguably moronic) idea was thought up by a creative agency rather than EA, you can bet the agency billed EA at least the same again for their ‘genius idea’. And for all of that, they still didn’t actually manage to make 250,000 people sit down for a few minutes and watch gameplay footage of their game!
And the funny thing is - next month THQ will send us review code and trailers for the next WWE Smackdown game, expecting us to write a review of their game and asking us to post up screenshots…
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We should be some screenshots up, with a big banner across the middle saying “COPYRIGHT VIOLATION” obscuring the most of the shot.
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Oh, this explains some stuff:
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/09/wwe-chokes-out.html -
i am the biggest wwe fan of all time
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