Microsoft’s New Policy Bars Players from Monetizing “Exclusive” Gameplay Videos
For years, YouTube user have been making money from gameplay videos of popular games series such as COD, Halo, or Uncharted. This was usually done by getting a partnership through YouTube and then placing ads on the videos, each time the ad was clicked, you’d make a small amount of money. With a good amount of subscribers, many users could make a small living from this. That changes today.
Microsoft has updated their “Game Content Usage Rules” stopping players from monetizing videos from a lot of series. The new rules state:
You may post your Item to a page or website that has advertising, but only if you do not earn any money from that advertising. For example, if you post your video on Youtube or Vimeo and there happens to be an advertisement next to it, then as long as you don’t get paid for that advertisement, the fact that there is an advertisement on the page doesn’t break these Rules. But enrolling in the Youtube partner program (or other similar programs), where you are entering into an agreement to get paid, is not allowed. On a similar note, if you create and distribute a free app, then you can’t earn any money from advertising in that app.
While this may only apply to exclusive games right now, the ripples of this new rule will be felt throughout the whole community; namely Halo. Halo 4 drops in less than a month, and with it being such a popular game, it would make sense to put your gameplay videos on YouTube for a little cash, but it looks like you won’t be able to do that now. How this will impact other game series is anybody’s guess at the moment, but if this gains some traction it could spread to COD, or other franchises. You can find a partial list of franchises that this applies to below:
- Halo (all versions)
- Forza Motorsport (all versions)*
- Fable (all versions)
- Kinectimals
- Kinect Adventures
- Kinect Joy Ride
- Age of Empires (all versions)
- Flight Simulator (all versions)*
- Kameo
- Perfect Dark Zero
- Project Gotham Racing (all versions)*
- Shadowrun
- Viva Piñata
