A note about Persona 5 Streaming From Atlus

You know, I thought the complaints about spoilerphobia on this site were overblown.

And then I saw this fucking ridiculous thing.

The game has been out for ages in Japan, this has nothing to do with actual spoilers. It's just Atlus having the belief that they'll will gain more sales from not allowing people to stream 100 hours of their game than they will gain from from these same streams. They're probably wrong but it's an interesting test case that goes up against the conventional wisdom.
 
The game has been out for ages in Japan, this has nothing to do with actual spoilers. It's just Atlus having the belief that they'll will gain more sales from not allowing people to stream 100 hours of their game than they will gain from from these same streams. They're probably wrong but it's an interesting test case that goes up against the conventional wisdom.
What test case. There's no quantifiable method of tracing sales lost by doing this. It's only a test case if there's something to test.
 
Lmao what the fuck Atlas Japan? People can stream whatever the fuck they want as long as it doesn't go against the streaming service's TOS.
 
You can't be serious. One is a threat and one is a request. You're not being honest to try and pretend they are the same thing

No, I would just implicitly understand that "please don't stream our game" is just as much of a threat. Companies don't make polite requests for the fun of it. Either way of stating it means "We will take legal action if you do this." At least that would be how I would read either statement.
 
No, I would just implicitly understand that "please don't stream our game" is just as much of a threat. Companies don't make polite requests for the fun of it. Either way of stating it means "We will take legal action if you do this." At least that would be how I would read either statement.

So we've entered 'words have no meaning anyway' now huh?
 
The game has been out for ages in Japan, this has nothing to do with actual spoilers. It's just Atlus having the belief that they'll will gain more sales from not allowing people to stream 100 hours of their game than they will gain from from these same streams. They're probably wrong but it's an interesting test case that goes up against the conventional wisdom.

Also, while I said executives, it is entirely possible it does include writers and devs as well. Streaming is still fairly new, and I can see why a dev may not like seeing their content they worked hard on being viewed for free online. That doesn't necessarily take maliciousness if the comparison between watching all of P5's cutscenes online is made to movies and tv.

I obviously think this is a bad move and only ruins PR for the game, but I can see why people may not like it such as the Sakurai mention.
 
https://twitter.com/alex_navarro/status/849354006774386688

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Wrapping this kind of thing up in pretence of caring about not spoiling fans and then posting a specific date is ridiculous. "Please, please, don't make us fuck you over".

It's bizarre that of all the JRPGs to have this happen to, the one with the most incentive to play yourself is the one that gets hit. Maybe it's just me, but I remember watching some of Giant Bomb's Endurance Run of 4 and deciding I wanted experience it for myself first before continuing. I couldn't imagine watching someone's else playthrough as my main experience, but I was definitely going to check out how SuperBestFriends' one went down the line. I know Persona got a big boost over the past few years, but (digital) word of mouth still feels like something it needs to get to the next level in the west. Again, SuperBestFriends could have marketed this game for months. There's already 27,871 shitlords on their subreddit seeing Persona related stuff on a daily basis for the past while.

I hope one of the major streamers/YouTubers calls them, but I don't blame them for abiding by this shit either.
 
Lmao what the fuck Atlas Japan? People can stream whatever the fuck they want as long as it doesn't go against the streaming service's TOS.

Can a streaming service allow people to stream an entire television series because it doesn't go against their terms of service? If anything twitch is at the mercy of game studios not the other way around. If they all decided one day that they don't want their games streamed, then that will be the end of twitch.
 
I find it weird that Altus USA wanted share functionality enabled for Yakuza 0 yet they do this for Persona. An odd lack of consistency.
 
The only reason I'm a Persona fan is because of the GB endurance run. I bought a vita because of it, I bought and played 2 different versions of Persona 3 and I bought P5 day one. None of these would have happened without a full video playthrough online. Atlas is so backward with this stuff. The game oozes charm, you should want as many people as possible playing it on video and winning over sceptics by showing how much fun these games are.
 
I find it weird that Altus USA wanted share functionality enabled for Yakuza 0 yet they do this for Persona. An odd lack of consistency.

Atlus USA would want it for P5 as well. Atlus JP's just putting their foot down here. I guess if this were to need to get changed, someone would need to make sure Atlus JP or Sega execs see news articles and other negative reception to this.

I don't agree with the use of the word threatening. I don't find calling this a warning to be hostile or mean spirited in any way.
I agree. GAF gets ad money based on their users here, but that doesn't mean you don't get threatened/warned about bans.
 
I find it weird that Altus USA wanted share functionality enabled for Yakuza 0 yet they do this for Persona. An odd lack of consistency.

Yakuza 0 is owned by Sega. It's funny to see the divide between how the two titles are handled though lol.
 
I have a small YouTube channel and I was planning some Persona 5 videos but... not anymore. I don't think it's worth the risk of getting a strike on my channel, even if I stick to their guidelines.

Who do these guys think they are, Nintendo??

I'm registered with the Nintendo Creator's Program and they never say "you can't post this or this or avoid posting about events". All its issues aside, Nintendo doesn't do this.
 
It dawns on me that they waited to put out this statement until AFTER the game had officially come out.

Gotta get those sales first before you shit on the customer, eh?
 
I don't agree with the use of the word threatening. I don't find calling this a warning to be hostile or mean spirited in any way.

Do you understand the significance of a DMCA strike to people who have a vested interest in their YouTube/twitch accounts?

So... it's not copyright infringement until you stream the later portions of the game?

Spoiler infringement. New law, look it up!
 
Is that the same across all game genres?

Excepting stuff that has minimal interactive gameplay like visual novels in cases where you can watch longplays of the whole thing, evidence suggests it's pretty consistent.

Where exactly can I find the research for what your saying?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...site-affects-the-business-of-video-games.html

Decent summary, at least. I doubt anyone's done a scientific examination, but the general direction is very straightforwardly in the positive direction.
 
Time to stop discussing how you're going to evolve policies and start doing. I appreciate the US side being so transparent, but at the end of the day, this is nonsensical. Everyone feels their game is special, most don't block the feature and most don't even make you feel like its an issue to share footage of their game in action. What makes even less sense is that ...it's Persona, a series that made its way to fame by way of word of mouth.
 
Watching a playthrough of persona 4 is literally the single reason I ever even gave this franchise and Atlus the time of day.



I bet Atlus US are about as annoyed as we are so I hope they can convince their japanese wing how backwards this policy is.
 
Japan gonna Japan.

We had to get Arc System Works to stop requesting takedowns of English Skullgirls videos in their defense of the Japanese release, which was much later.

We more or less had to pull rank and say "Look, this is OUR IP and we do what we want with it. If you want to take down Japanese-voiced videos to defend your investment, go ahead. But you may not target the game as a whole."

Holy shit.
 
It's utterly baffling how the execs who made this decision couldn't foresee how the response to it would mar the response to the game on release day. Instead of the dialogue surrounding its release being "Persona 5 is out; it's super good!", you have a social media and press shitstorm brewing about Atlus' draconian streaming policies completely overwhelming any positive coverage the game naturally would've gotten. It's unbelievably out of touch.
 
Them waiting until now to do this is also shitty. People do this as a job. They schedule their stuff around this, portion a block for it.

Now that plan is ruined after they likely already started on it with no backup plan.
 
Them waiting until now to do this is also shitty. People do this as a job. They schedule their stuff around this, portion a block for it.

Now that plan is ruined after they likely already started on it with no backup plan.

The game was just released today.
 
Excepting stuff that has minimal interactive gameplay like visual novels in cases where you can watch longplays of the whole thing, evidence suggests it's pretty consistent.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...site-affects-the-business-of-video-games.html

Decent summary, at least. I doubt anyone's done a scientific examination, but the general direction is very straightforwardly in the positive direction.

That article mainly discusses how streaming has changed video game and console development. It does not talk about how story based games are effected or not. Of course streaming will force companies to make their games more streaming "friendly" if people can watch your entire game online.

Again its common sense that games like mindcraft, small indie games, mmo's, and mobas, all benefit from streaming. This however does not prove that its good for games or video game development in general. There are games where the entire experience is ruined if it can simply be watched for free online. Whether that is ok or not is up to personal opinion.
 
Them waiting until now to do this is also shitty. People do this as a job. They schedule their stuff around this, portion a block for it.

Now that plan is ruined after they likely already started on it with no backup plan.

Yeah. The fact that this came out so late also kinda fucked some YouTubers I follow over. Hell one of them got an early copy and started streaming a few days ago!
 
It's an awful mess all told, but I can't help but laugh the rate at which that press release goes from "what's up Persona fans" to "stream this game at your own fucking peril".
 
Them waiting until now to do this is also shitty. People do this as a job. They schedule their stuff around this, portion a block for it.

Now that plan is ruined after they likely already started on it with no backup plan.

The Super Best Friends said they were literally in the middle of recording when they found out.
 
We don't need spoiler-police. The internet has kinda been around before P5, and for the most part, gaming community is pretty damn good about spoiler tags and warnings.

This is dumb.
 
Dan's gaming is streaming this right now for almost 10K people and has been through story scenes for the last like 6 hours.

Wonder if he's gonna get taken down.
 
What did these people do back in the day when Giant Bomb did a nonstop stream of the entire story of Persona 4?
 
Let's Plays have sold me on games before (I'll want enough of a LP to know I want to buy the game then stop watching). They help more than they harm.

AtlusJP coming off like whiny bitches.
 
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