Nintendo Nixes YouTube Videos of Super Mario Speedruns

Posted by timothy on Sunday September 20, 2015 @02:39AM from the you-mean-they-also-buy-games? dept.

The Boston Globe reports (based on Kotaku's story earlier this month) that Nintendo is cracking down on YouTube videos which show speedruns of its games -- computer-guided play that skips completely human hands pressing buttons on a controller. Why? The article notes that these play-throughs "require the use of ROMs, digital backup files of the original game that can be freely passed from computer to computer, or downloaded from well-known websites. Therefore, Nintendo reasons — and YouTube is clearly sympathetic to this reasoning — there are copyright issues at play, since players aren’t using the (ancient) original game cartridges, or newer copies sold directly online by Nintendo." Legally justifiable or not, this seems unlikely to build goodwill with some of Nintendo's most nostalgic fans.

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Watching games is like watching movies by Anonymous Coward · 2015-09-20 02:56 · Score: 0, Troll

After I watch someone play a game online and solve all the puzzles, I don't feel the need to pay 60 bucks to do it myself. Eventually ALL companies will be cracking down on full playthroughs of their games.