Can the games industry ban just full game walkthrough Youtube videos?

In the wake of the Telltale Games shutdown, I've been wondering about this quite a lot.
I love Let's Plays, but the amount of them that have full game walkthroughs are probably costing the game industry a lot of money.
I know lots of people personally who refuse to buy games because 'they can watch them on Youtube'.

And it's terrible. It's not free advertising.
Especially with story games like Telltale's, it truly must've cost them dearly for them to shutdown so hard.

Can't the games industry rally to give games the same integrity as movies? Are they able to ban full game walkthroughs on Youtube (or at least, until a certain time period past the game's release).
Isn't it perfectly reasonable?
You can find Avengers fight scenes on Youtube, but you'd never see anyone post the whole movie.

I googled around a bit trying to find some discourse on this, but they're few and far between. It's a little bewildering why no one is talking about it as much.
When a video gets taken down because of a cease-and-desist from a game company, people seem to chalk it up to 'oh no, the big sinister Game Company just wants to take all our money and ruin our enjoyment, boycott them!'
It's ridiculous! It's a little upsetting that yes, it is happening because of money, but it's the truth. Game companies shutdown every day because of it.
I'm taking a Bachelor's in Game Design right now, and learning about the amount of money a company makes per game sold is heart-wrenching. Consumers seem to think game devs and game companies make big bucks, but the money from each game, after going through distributors, publishers, marketers and investors, the profit that comes back is most commonly a single digit per game... if you're lucky to have made a hit.

It's little wonder how often game devs get laid off from companies.
It might not solve the issue of game companies going bankrupt and closing overnight, but surely at least targeting a source that gives away the free full game experience on Youtube could start bringing it in the right direction?

yes, they always could - and not just full walkthroughs, ANY FORM of let's play or content video can be banned if not done with the authorization of the game's owner, because they're using the resources of the copyright holder without licence.

The problem here is the mass of let's play and the fear that going against them would create too much bad publicity.
And the filters aren't good enough to identify problematic let's plays without personal checks by employees, which would have to be hired and paid for that work.

So the simple solution is the only practical one:
don't watch let's plays or walkthroughs if you don't want spoilers as a player.

And never forget that watching a movie is not the same as playing a game - there are actually a lot less people who would only watch the video instead of playing the game than you think.

Youtube outright banning let's plays/walkthroughs/playthroughs is going to cause such a massive outrage it's not even (okay, a little) funny, so that's not the answer here. Also, with the exception of Visual Novels and similiar gameplay-light games, I don't think let's plays on youtube have a negative impact on video game sales. After all, I'd rather play a game myself than watch someone else play.

For me, watching a Youtube video about someone else playing a game is not the same as playing the game all by myself. Youtube videos also help me to decide if I like a particular game and if I want to spend money on it. Anyway, I find Walkthroughs pretty useful especially when it comes to games like Machinarium or Unmechanical (Honestly, without seeing a Walkthrough on Youtube I wouldn't have managed to complete these games, because I got stuck way more often than I probably should've). But yeah, Walkthrough videos could be banned when it comes to Copyright issues. Anyway, I don't really know how important it is for the game industry to make these videos disappear.

Greetings,
Tw0Face

I watch(ed) a lot of LPs and true I didn't buy all those games, but I'm confident that I ended up buying 80% of them. I also was able to discover some games I'd have never given a second look thanks to those LPs (so a case of free advertising ;) ).

As for VNs, there are some that only allow one route to be LPed or only the first chapter. Considering the genre I don't really mind. On the other hand it's more amusing to watch someone play a game where you romance a pidgeon, than to play it by my lonesome self.

Do you have statistics on how much money is lost in the gaming industry because of Let's Plays, aside from anecdotes of a few friends of yours? Honestly asking.

I mean, my kids love to watch Let's Plays. I don't, it's boring to me. But, I have bought them a few games that they have discovered from these videos. And a couple, I ended up playing myself and enjoying. So, I guess I'm saying, if we're just going on personal anecdotes, there are those that contradict your assessment. Therefore, stats would be good.

Telltale-like games that have little to no gameplay and only subsist on an illusion of choice but don't really offer any differences in the routes you take based on those 'choices' are literally the only genre for which this could be argued, and even then in my opinion it is a poor argument. There are a lot of other factors at play for why Telltale is struggling, it's not just because "youtubers bad, reviews ruin gaming" or some such bullshit.

The most obvious would be how telltale stagnated. They hit their peak with the walking dead and decided to purchase the publishing rights to a bunch of wannabe EA alpha demos just because they had zombies and release these alpha demos as a full game as a sort of blatant "pay us for the work these other people did and are improving on even though we aren't going to update to their improvements and our version of the game will quickly fall apart as the true pc version gets constant updates and when players find out they get put out." Rather than innovate their own style in future games they tried to sell on short-lived nostalgia while releasing cheaply ported shells that they had no intention of improving of popular games that held similar themes to their flagship and doubled down on that strategy amidst criticism rather than reevaluate their marketing strategies.

I buy less and less games these days because less and less games interest me. However, I never buy games before I check them out through let's plays and video reviews because the game industry is so oversaturated these days that the chances of picking up something I enjoy based solely on gaming journalist reviews and the box art...are not good odds for me. That's really the main reason finding a career in 'the industry' is so difficult these days, everyone and their brother wants those jobs right now. Meanwhile I'm enjoying being able to go anywhere in the country right now and get a job in my field within a day tops, probably the first place I walk in the door actually because almost no one under 50 right now wants to be an electrician, we all want our cushy jobs in front of the computer screen instead.

These couple of examples are only meant to say that there is a lot more to the nuances of why game companies fail and people get laid off then you seem to want to acknowledge. Saying youtubers are bankrupting game companies with let's plays is like saying that wiki timelines are bankrupting book publishers. Yeah you can get the gist of the story from one just as a lets play can give you the gist of what a game/book is about but if the game/book is so bland that it doesn't attract you to want to play/read it yourself based on such a synopsis then that's a failing of the game/book, not the youtuber/wiki writer.

Personally, I think the lesson to be had here is:

If you create a game in which the main draw is the story, that story cannot deviate, does not reflect personal choices, and the gameplay is subpar... People will watch your cutscenes instead. After all, that's the draw of your game.

I've done this with several video games. "The Last of Us" being one of the main ones I did it with. Why would I want to play a sub-par third person shooter with survival elements and repetitive gameplay that frequently railroads a player... When the only reason ANYONE plays the game is Ellie and her interactions with Joel? Create a subpar game with a great story, and people will skip your game for the story on YouTube, pure and simple.

I did the same thing with Destiny 2. Because, frankly, the gameplay is below subpar and really terrible to watch (and play... because it's all Destiny 1 gameplay, and I did put 200 hours into that). So, I hit up "cutscenes" to get the full story and that's it.

If people are more interested in watching a walkthrough... or just the cutscene bits... Then the game publishers should be taking notes that their gameplay needs to improve.

Why do people buy a video game? To play it. The enjoyment of owning a video game comes from playing it. If they are getting their enjoyment purely from your story and skipping the buying of the game just to get to that, because they don't want to play your game then, as a game dev... maybe you should've simply went into Hollywood Movie Making instead.

And this is coming from a guy who wants to make his game story-centric with gameplay elements being fairly secondary. However, I want player input to matter... so if you watch a "Let's Play!" of my game, it won't be quite the same as if you picked it up yourself and made decisions for yourself.

Often, when a LPer runs across a game like that, then the draw of the LP isn't the game itself... but the LPer making their commentary, reactions, and jokes. And with a person doing a Walkthrough, they now have a lot of extra work to put into the game when the experience is different from player to player.

The problem TellTale games had in particular is this: The first run of any of their games is amazing. When you load it back up and make all the opposite choices... It becomes obvious how little effort they actually put into the game... how little your choices actually matter... how much the game itself is lying to you... and how cardboard everything in the story really is. The second run... actually retroactively ruins your first experience. That's the problem with TellTale games in a nutshell. It's why most people didn't play them beyond The Walking Dead 1st and 2nd season... and the one about Fairy Tales... with the Big Bad Wolf (I forget its name, but I absolutely adored the world it introduced despite everything else being pretty bad in it). But, once you've experienced that once... running one of their games a second time and making different choices... and seeing how flimsy the whole thing is? You remember that forever. You remember it for every one of their games afterwards. It makes you cease connecting with those games. Because you know your choices don't matter at all. You're on rails.

It's just a bad business practice to not include fun gameplay with a VIDEO GAME. You should stick to writing books or making your own movies if you just want to tell a story and make gameplay as subpar as possible. Otherwise, you have to deal with people like me who just go, "I'll just watch the 2 hours of your cutscenes online and ignore your game, since I don't want to play your game, but I want to enjoy your story".

I've also bought games because of Let's Plays. I also know people who wouldn't have even known of games if it weren't for Let's Plays.

I'm with Tai_MT. My brother watched a full LP of Detroit Become Human because he didn't have a plan to buy PS4 and the game at all. He kept constantly recommended me to watch the LP because it was like a movie if you watch a non-commentary LP. He did the same with StarCraft 2, like, he knew the large part of the lore just because he watched all the cinematic scenes on the youtube. He is not a person who likes to play a game in a restricting scenario, so he never buys a game like that. He would either watch film/anime or watch the LP if he wants a story rather than play it.

If the game's strong point is about the narrative/story, I can see how some people prefer to watch them on video.

Just to clarify, I wasn’t asking about banning all Let’s Plays. Just full game walkthroughs.

Like I mentioned as a first analogy: You can find fight scenes of Avengers on Youtube, but not the whole movie.

So game reviews, playthroughs of sidequests or open-world fun and goofs, and snippets of game throughout, so long as it isnt the full game, are fair game.

The idea behind this post was giving games the same integrity that movies have on Youtube.

The problem is that you're comparing apples to oranges. Games are interactive, which means you shouldn't get the full experience of a game unless you are playing it. Movies aren't interactive. They're like 2 hours where you sit there and add no input. So, watching an entire movie on YouTube is literally giving away the entire experience for free. Meanwhile, a Walkthrough on YouTube... doesn't give away any of the experience. At least... not if the game is good and there are multiple tactics/strategies to complete the game. The games that suffer from this are more of the "video game is trying to be a movie instead of a game" genre... So things like the Drake's series (or whatever it is... Male Lara Croft games)… TellTale games... The Last of Us... etcetera. Games that have more player inputs... a walkthrough doesn't really ruin those experiences. You can watch a "Let's Play" of a Pokémon game, but nobody really plays exactly how that person is going to play. Why? Because the game caters to lots of different styles. Likewise, a Walkthrough of "Breath of the Wild" doesn't really affect the game either... because there are lots of ways to play and lots of preferences to play.

Walkthroughs only ruin linear narrative experiences... Which... frankly speaking... Aren't really "games". They're more, "narrative experiences broken up by sections of gameplay". The gameplay in these is usually extremely structured, limited, or has only one solution.

I would rather watch someone play "Edith Finch" in a Walkthrough than actually play it myself. Because at least the Walkthrough cuts out 900% of the tedium of a game like that and you aren't missing any of the gameplay. I'd rather watch a Walkthrough of "Inside" than play the game (because the gameplay is frankly awful, and the story is... well... it's there, I guess).

See, there's a lot of people trying to fashion games as "art", that don't realize that half of the artistic expression a video game possesses... is the fact that it's interactive. Namely, they should be telling half of their stories through the act of gameplay instead of the act of "random nonsense that can be YouTubed later!". These are people who understand movies, but not games.

I do not watch Walkthroughs of games like Portal 1 or Portal 2. Why? Because the way they solve the puzzles is not the same way I'd solve them. The experience of that game isn't the story, it's the immersive world and the "aha!" moments each player has. You know what ruins Portal or Portal 2? When someone sits behind you when you play it for the first time and tells you all the solutions. Because the main draw of the game is solving the puzzles and feeling really smart for doing it. There are no moments of, "are you serious? that's what I had to do?". There are only moments of, "yes! I got it to work! I figured it out!".

What about other games like "Five Nights At Freddy's"? Games where even a Walkthrough doesn't help you because of a layer of player skill and randomness thrown in? Or "The Witness" where you can look up absolutely every single puzzle... but you can't complete the last challenges without having at least learned the mechanics of the puzzles since they're random every time? Or, even in places of "The Witness", a Walkthrough is too slow when a mechanic clicks with the player before the person has a time to explain why each solution works.

What about a game like Super Metroid? Sure, you can look up Speedruns of the game or full 100% Walkthroughs... But, it drags from the game itself if you try to follow that. A player is naturally inclined to explore a game like Metroid. To try to figure things out on their own, because exploration is the primary gameplay element of these types of games. Moreover, sequence breaking in Super Metroid leaves most Walkthroughs as a simple, "most efficient and easiest path" instead of the one a player might make on their second or third run. One in which they defeat bosses in the opposite order just because they figured out how to. Or, where they figured out interesting ways to traverse the map using their skills and abilities.

Movies aren't like that. A movie is the same on each watch of it. It doesn't change.

But a game? A game that has good gameplay? That changes with every single player. I've seen people say, "Do this, it's the most efficient way to do X and gets you ahead pretty quickly in the game" and I look at it and go, "that's not really very efficient at all, and I can use this other thing that you said is hard... but I don't find it hard... and I'm getting ahead now".

tl;dr
If a game can be ruined by having a full Walkthrough of it up on YouTube... It's not a very good game to begin with. In fact, it's probably not much of a game and its devs should've probably made a movie instead.

There's still the issue of story spoilers in walkthroughs, which is one reason I don't usually watch videos for walkthroughs for story-heavy games.

If your game can be enjoyed to its fullest just by watching a full LP/walkthrough video of it then I would argue that it isnt a game at all.. What makes a game, a game, is that you need to experience it to be able to enjoy its entirety..

I agree wholeheartedly about games being an interactive medium, which is why it's hard to say the experience is ruined from watching a walkthrough, but this comes from the perspective of people like us, who are core gamers.

When there are people who sit on the fence and are content with a half-experience, they could just watch the whole walkthrough on Youtube and get that part of the experience they want from it.
I buy games too, so it's not like I like to be forced to buy something to experience it, but coming into this industry in the future, I have to weigh in this question as a developer as well.

Advertisement and marketing-wise, reviews and gameplay snippet footage is perfectly enough for a gamer or potential buyer to get to know what your game is about, and decide whether they're interested.
But footage of the whole game is where there's a bit of a gulf in content shown where it just crosses the amount of content shown that it begins to lose value because it takes away from the experience.

Especially so as indie developers, we can't just say 'If a game's whole content can be shown through a Youtube video, it doesn't really deserve to be called a game' because it doesn't disprove the fact that games take hours of time and effort to make, even if they're just a lengthy visual novels.

There's such a wide variety of audiences out there that perhaps take gaming more casually than some of us. And if it so happens an RPG Maker game was published that's kind of 50% gameplay and 50% story, but a person who was initially interested in getting it changed their mind because they've watched all the spoilers they need from a full game walkthrough, I'm inclined to take the side of the developer on this matter because ultimately, these are our livelihoods as game devs.

It's why I brought up this topic in the first place for discourse ^^;

@Nivlacart, the game developers or the game companies can ban walkthrough Youtube videos because they have copyrights their products. However, the let's play videos are likely to obtain the licensing or notice from the company already.
Like you said that "it is not like customers can open the game play it for a while which allows them to make an informed decision." The alternative way to know exactly without download game and play is to watch the youtube video.

Let play videos help game players find solutions in your game like puzzles or missions that are hard to play to figure out if they tried many times when they impatient run low and never play your game again because they cannot move on the next missions. The videos prevent a game unfairness that might be perceived to some players.

If people watch Let play videos do not like the game, you as the game developers do not take a personal offense. Everyone like different genres of games (like action, strategy, RPG, card games)and it doesn't mean your game is terrible. Marketing strategies do not an equal to a scam. Do not you think customers have to right to know what they are getting. Honest business practice helps build a good customer relationship and create profit in long-term with both sides happy with their exchanges.
We here are both as a customer and a game developer, so we are informed about advertisement deception.

One thing that it does not matter if you watch videos about the games, I am not taking a note while watching guides videos and player's experience that what gamer wants is to play the game. The game player plays your games about 1 hour will intuitively know if your game is fun or not.

This is what makes sandbox games so great. A true sandbox game can not be ruined by watching videos of it. Often videos motivate people to want to play the sandbox game ever more. That is how Minecraft exploded (the creepers probably helped some with the exploding) in popularity.

you'll find that many game companies encourage lets plays because it is free publicity.

fans of a franchise, reviewers or streamers will still buy the game..... *AND* (a point that MANY people seem to miss) the game studio is already paid in full at the time of release of the game.
should there ever be any loss of revenue for whatever reason, that loss goes to the *publisher*, not the *developer*.
people need to understand the difference between publisher and developer, because, it's not the same thing.

all the recent franchise fudge-ups were due to the publishing company trying to grind more money out of the sale, not the studio sabotaging their own product.
the studios are contracted to craft a final product much like construction companies are hired to make buildings.
whether or not the leasing company is able to lease that building to somebody, is not the contractor's business.
it just so happens that MANY publishers *buy* developing studios to have somebody on their payroll for the case when they want money and they want to get that money from the release of a game (that they just so happen *to be able* to release).

In reality, it isn't "hard to say it is ruined". It either is or it isn't. If a walkthrough ruins the gameplay experience, then it isn't so much a game as it is a guided movie that requires minimal inputs from the player to get to the end. The problem you seem to be having is what the latest "trend" of video games has been doing: "Can a video game be made with as little effort as possible to maximize profit... and then we just call it 'artsy' or 'interpretive' to make people think it's deeper than it is so it gets sales?". This is your Walking Simulators, games like Inside, Limbo, etcetera. Games where there is exactly 1 way forward, everyone plays it exactly the same way, there is no deviation, and you can experience the whole thing via YouTube. These are games that are ruined by a Walkthrough. But, that's because the developers are morons and instead of making a MOVIE like they are doing... they call it a "video game" instead. And then, they wonder why their profits don't do well, why YouTube can spoil their entire games, etcetera. Because, frankly, these are people who should be working with animation or film programs and not with Game Engines to tell their stories. If you create a game as a dev, and someone puts a walkthrough of the whole thing up on YouTube, and it ruins your game to the point that people don't want to buy it? Yeah, that's on you. Most games, however? Yeah, they don't fall into that category. Most games, a "Walkthrough" essentially just helps the player complete areas they didn't know what to do... complete puzzles... helps them know where to go... Which can also be an issue of the game dev for not signposting properly. If a game cannot properly have a "Walkthrough", what happens is players band together to create a "wiki" for it.


I might be in the minority on this, but... I've never been "on the fence" about a video game. If I want to buy it, I do, and play it, regardless of what any critic says or what any spoilers were out on YouTube. If I don't want to buy a video game, no amount of positive reviews (even from other gamers! even from friends!) will make me want to buy it. I think most gamers decide if they want to buy your game in the first 10 minutes of exposure.

The only exception to this rule that I've noticed? If it's a game they've never heard of before. For a long time, I never heard of "Hollow Knight". Didn't know what it was. I was watching some guy just critique games (he doesn't review them, he just critiques features and story and gives his own personal opinion and own personal problems). He critiqued the game. I never heard of it. He explained the gameplay... I didn't care. Still don't. Gameplay sounds boring as crap. But, he got into the story of the game. The snippets you find, the environmental storytelling. Oh, then I wanted to play it. But, it's not high priority. It's on my steam "Wish List" and will come off of it at some point. Probably when I buy a new Wired controller so I don't have to deal with absolutely terrible keyboard/mouse set up nonsense that all PC's adopt.

Same guy did a short 3 minute critique of "Factorio" in Early Access. A brief explanation of the game, some problems he personally had with it, and about 3 minutes of him playing the game to illustrate his points. I bought it immediately, because it was a game I would absolutely play. Simulation type thing... all about efficiency... story doesn't matter... ever growing list of goals and factory demands... aliens to keep at bay to keep your factory working... Yeah, I wanted to play it.

But, we get to things like "Destiny 2". I played Destiny 1. It was terrible. Destiny 2 advertisements, gameplay, the BETA, positive reviews, biased positive reviews, the deceptive marketing... yeah, none of that made me want to buy it. I decided back with Destiny 1: The Taken King Expansion... I wasn't going to buy Destiny 2 unless it was the experience I was promised with the first game. It wasn't. I made up my mind on the game over a year before ever getting my hands on it.

I think most gamers are like that. Even the casuals.

That first glimpse of the game we see basically sets it in stone for us if we want to buy it. A walkthrough or review online isn't really going to change our minds.

Most people watch reviews after they've played the game... and they just look for reviews that validate their purchase (or lack of purchase) and nothing else. They watch reviews for assurances that they made the right choice. Or... they watch reviews for games they simply have no opinion of... and no intention of even making a decision to buy the game being reviewed.


Advertising is most often very deceptive. Marketing shows you just enough to get you excited, but not enough to actually show you the game. It's why most advertising is pre-rendered... and much of it is just a small snippet of the storyline to get you intrigued. Advertising tells you nothing about the game.

Because of this, you've got one shot with marketing to make people want to buy your product. Usually, it's the E3 presentation. In that first instant... people decide whether they want your game or not. If they decide they do... unless you royally screw it up, you've got a guaranteed purchase. If they decide they don't... doesn't matter what you do, you aren't ever getting them as customers for your product. People are 100% set in their ways, in their opinions, and in not changing their minds.

Even if we go back to "The Last Of Us" that I mentioned earlier. It was announced and I immediately went, "Ah, another Zombie horror game with all the usual tropes in the oversaturated market... and it's on a system I don't own... which I will never buy... because it doesn't have any good games on it... except the retro ones... from PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 1... which I already own". A year after release and thousands of people telling me later, "You should buy it! It's got a great story!". I dismissed the story entirely, because... well.. I've seen in before in 3 dozen other zombie stories. It's "old hat". My friend eventually showed me a clip on YouTube of Ellie and Joel talking. I went, "Ah, that's why people say it's a good story. You play it for the interactions between Joel and Ellie and nothing else. The story itself is garbage, but these characters and the way they interact is endearing. It's a character piece.". I YouTubed all the Cutscenes and got out of it the thing everybody else did. My opinion of the game didn't change. My opinion of the story didn't change. They didn't lose a potential sale from me at all. If YouTube had never existed, would I have bought the game? No. I would've simply been unable to see the cutscenes. If I were really curious then, I'd have just tracked down a plot synopsis or something. But, I wouldn't have even gotten that far. I'd have just relegated it to "boring game that is somehow wildly popular for no reason" and never did a thing about it.

So many games people have said are amazing are games I will never try. Because what I've seen of them... Isn't interesting. The one with the tribal girl who shoots bows at mechanical dinosaurs? I... don't care. "But, you find out why the world is like this!". I'm going to guess "post apocalypse... the twist is probably something stupid or boring or obvious... the gameplay is probably a lot like a third person shooter... not something I want to play". Is that right? Wrong? Doesn't matter. I made up my mind about the game before it ever even released. Based on the initial E3 footage of it.

The only difference is that... Apparently, the story really is nothing to write home about, because nobody has even convinced me that it's worth it to watch the cutscenes for the game... And I haven't seen people tout the gameplay as amazing either.

I don't think gamers are "on the fence" about very many games at all. They see the first trailer, they decide whether they're going to buy it in that moment and when. A Walkthrough on YouTube of that game won't convince someone to buy it or to not buy it.


Except, it doesn't. Unless your "game" is actually a "movie" trying to pretend to be a game. If that's the case... just make a movie. It's far cheaper.

Unless you mean, "oh, it spoils parts of the game". Well, yeah, but that's the player's choice. It is incredibly easy for a player to avoid spoilers of any kind if they want to. If a player is using a 100% Walkthrough of your game... it's most likely to complete it as quickly as possible because they don't care about your story, about your gameplay, about your characters... They just want to beat it, so they can move on to the next thing. Or rather... They want the satisfaction of being a Completionist and then they move on.

Personally, I love Walkthroughs. If you put a puzzle in your game, I'm using a Walkthrough, because I am not going to be freakin' roadblocked by you into solving something incredibly tedious and mundane that tests my patience and not my skill. If you are going to put puzzles in your game... Make your game entirely about puzzles, so I know what I'm getting into... Or have your puzzles be on par with Portal 1 and Portal 2. If you cannot do either... do not include puzzles and I will not grab a Walkthrough.


What is your point? The definition of a game is pretty clear. It is something you play. If you create a game that you do not play... It is no longer a game. It is a lengthy MOVIE that took time and effort to create instead. If you want to defend it as a movie, that's much easier. As, you can have it taken down off of YouTube without much fuss at all by stating you hold copyrights to it, and they do not have authorization to distribute your movie.

But... There's a LOT of backlash to be had if you try to masquerade that movie as a "game" and then try to get people to pull down their videos of it. A "game" implies you cannot get the full experience via YouTube. You will have a difficult time arguing this with anyone who is a gamer at all. Because watching someone play a game is not the same as playing the game yourself. They are entirely different experiences. But, a movie? It's only got the one experience. If you watch it, you've gotten that experience. Doesn't matter if you paid the $60 to watch the movie (let's face it, most movies only cost us $15... so you're exploiting terminology just to charge us 4x as much for the same thing) or nothing to watch it on YouTube. If you watch it for free, you got the whole experience for free. With a movie, that's the experience your selling... the "watching" part of it.

Honestly, if you're an Indie Dev and your game is more like a movie than a game, I expect to pay "bargain bin" prices for that movie. $5 or less. Because, frankly, you've got no oversight for quality of that movie, and there's no fun for me to be had in it through my own means or methods... unless I grab a bunch of friends and we Riff on it. If you were producing anything near "quality" in terms of a movie... in animation... acting... storytelling... effects... I would pay more for that. But Indie Devs? Yeah... Even games like "What Remains of Edith Finch"... I wouldn't pay anything more than $10 for the movie of that. As a game dev, I certainly wouldn't try to market it as a game either. I'd just make the movie, charge movie prices, and enforce takedowns on YouTube on the ground that it's a movie instead of a game.

Do you know what is supposed to be the difference between a movie and a game?

If you watch a movie... you've watched the movie. There's no reason to purchase it, rent it, whatever... unless you want to watch it again. But... if you watch a video game... You may want to actually buy the video game to play it. Watching a whole movie online kills sales in every single case. Watching someone play a game online... actually boosts sales. Not always. But, it inevitably does, especially if the person doing the game playing is popular. You don't get that effect with movies.

Well, okay. You do if it's a movie like "Birdemic" or "The Room".

If you've created a "game" that can be ruined by people putting up a walkthrough on YouTube... you haven't made a "game". You've made a "movie", that you're trying to "pass off" as a "game" in order to charge more for it than you'd otherwise get if you'd just made it a movie instead.

Developers who do this are little more than charlatans in my opinion. Which is why I have little sympathy for them when their entire game can be YouTubed and the player misses out on nothing for not playing it. Next time, they should just make a movie instead of trying to trick people into paying Video Game Prices for subpar Movies in the Bargain Bin.


I'm not, because that casual person who just wants the story... Isn't going to buy your game anyway. You've lost nothing. They're too casual to invest time and effort into your game if they just want to YouTube the story. The enjoyment of a game is to play it. Just like the enjoyment of a book is to read it. I can google the synopsis of any book there is, with all the spoilers... But, it's still not the same as actually reading it. Reading it changes the impact it has on you.

You can tell me a character dies in a book... or a movie... and it doesn't matter. Because... it's not the same as experiencing everything up to that point... and having it hit you regardless. That comes from the skill of the person making the movie or the skill of the writer involved.

I knew the story of "The Green Mile" before I ever read it or watched the movie. I read the book knowing full well which character was going to die and when. It did not stop me from bawling as I read it, because it had been handled so perfectly that even the spoiler did not spoil it. I later saw the movie, years after reading the book. I cried at the same scene, despite it being handled differently... but that was the skill of the actors and the director. I knew what was coming, it didn't change it.

Our "Livelihoods" as game devs does not rest on whether someone spoils it on YouTube and someone chooses to seek out those Spoilers (there do actually exist Spoiler Free Walkthroughs! That's a thing! Some people want all the gameplay spoiled, but not any of the story!). The only way in which it impacts a dev negatively is if the entire experience they crafted lacks player choice, character choice, gameplay is super linear, everyone will play the game exactly the same, etcetera. Because... then you've just got a Movie where you have to mash buttons every so often instead of munching delicious popcorn while you watch.

I prefer the delicious popcorn and the fullscreen on my monitor for such games, rather than being strapped to a controller for inputs that don't need to exist.

If any dev makes an experience that can be ruined by YouTube Walkthroughs... They should just make movies instead. It's what they're trying to do anyway. The rest of the devs who actually want to make gameplay... Well, they're going to be fine regardless of how many hours of footage of their game exists... including full walkthroughs. They'll probably even get extra sales from the exposure, as it's free advertising for those folks.

But, that's just my two cents.

(Just for note, Telltale didn't go under because of let's plays. They went over due to being bad financial management decisions and over saturating their own little niche market which wasn't an endless black hole of money.)

A personal opinion here as well. I don't think let's plays should be banned.
Lets plays/walkthroughs might actually even -help- an indie game. Lets not forget the boom that exploded from FNAF, it was because popular youtubers played it and made reactions that it garnered such big public attention that it personally wouldn't have originally, the developer had made games before and it was just okay games, easy to assume that their newest game would have been meh too but it wasn't.

I can say from personal experience that playing a game and watching it is two different experiences. I laugh watching the vids of slenderman lets plays but almost cried when I played it personally. I even found new games from lets plays, plus bought games that I watched the whole lets play of because I liked it so much I wanted to support the developer.

People who rather watch a let's play than buy and play the game themselves are usually casuals or people who were uninterested/ not convinced enough to buy your game in the first place. I'd say let's plays are 'watching your friend play a game when you visited' taken to the next level, someone did buy the game already and let others watch it while they play. But now instead of on the couch, its on the internet. If you liked what you saw very much, you'll buy a copy yourself when you get the chance. It is up to us to support the devs we like.

Also side note, banning entire walkthroughs will cause butterfly effect that could wipe out the 'retro game full walk through archives' on youtube. You can't buy any of those games anymore, but they were a good reference of the benchmark of the time. Game history must be saved. X''D