Counterpoint: maybe none of the people they have drama with are their core customers. Nintendo seems to have a similar "Disney Adult" problem as Disney where you have a population of vocal adults who think they are the core customer, but in reality the company moved on to selling to those people's children or grandchildren years ago.
They essentially put an advertisement of how much they suck in place of a free ad space they were given.
Is he though? Looking about his top videos, I see lots of "pro gaming" or speedruns, so I circle back to my earlier question of who is their core audience? I suspect this kind of content doesn't move the needle on units sold very much.
I'm not saying he's bringing in their core demographics. Just that he makes some sales for them.
But, the behavior of The Tetris Company is it's own bag of worms, and an even more agitating one than Nintendo. If anyone was looking for an example of how to be worse, I think TTC may very well have the formula down.
Pointcrow isn't, currently, one of those guys that plays just one game forever or even one game mostly. He's a 'variety streamer', he does have a pretty firm focus on nintendo games both classic and new but that isn't his whole ouvre.
Nintendo hates those. Look at how they treated the Smash community. It shocked me and I don't even like those games. Nintendo sucks and doesn't deserve anyone's money. Don't even try to understand them or their motives, sucking is just a part of their DNA.
https://i.imgur.com/oAROhEq.png
The truth is, even though I don't play video games much at all any more, I played this game when I was younger and kept a pulse on it since, so I know when a character matchup is bad, and I can recognize difficult techniques like ledge dashing or amsah teching. But, I argue as well that even though it's silly and even though you may not be able to pick out all of the ridiculous high-level play going on in a match, the energy of competitive gaming is simply infectious. It's hard to pick just one video, but maybe something here will resonate with folks unfamiliar. Is it a little silly? Yes, definitely. But the energy is infectious. It draws me in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im68s2z0AAY
The newest game in the series, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, has a commendable competitive scene, even though Nintendo has kind of nerfed a lot of the things that made Melee so competitively interesting later on in the series (ledge hogging, wave dashing, ...) and focused more on making a party game.
People keep playing Melee though, with tournaments going on pretty much all the time (and getting shut down all the time, too), even though they usually have to run at a financial loss, for the love of the sport, as lacking official blessing, it is hard to attract advertisers and sponsors. But seriously, just take a look at what they've done with Slippi.gg: They've essentially taken this old game and added rollback netcode and matchmaking to it. It's not exactly unheard of amount of dedication, but I find it very impressive nonetheless.
When I look at what happened to this scene, I can't help but feel there is a lot of missed opportunity any way you slice it. But maybe, I'm just out of touch and nostalgic.
Considering the stable sales of Nintendo products, this still seems to work despite Nintendo policing content for many years now.
So despite smaller blips like this one, one might argue that they're actually quite good in curating the content they want to use for marketing...
That angle actually pushed me closer to Nintendo's reasoning. If people buy games because they see them on these streams, what's the likely buying decision from seeing a super cool new feature for Breath of the Wild that only works on emulator? I'd wager that it increases the likelihood of getting a Steamdeck instead of a Switch and playing the emulated version instead. That seems like an occurrence that Nintendo wants less of.
But of course, Nintendo did kind of start to figure this out; they actually started implementing similar value-adds like multiplayer and save states into their own emulation suites for retro consoles. I think this is good, since you're essentially asking people to buy the same thing again (maybe thrice or more if you're a die hard Nintendo fan who has followed the console lineage since they started doing re-releases like this, back on the Wii and 3DS.); you may as well provide some value-adds.
But, maybe they can't do anything about modding, because nobody has figured that out? Well... except for Valve, who has apparently figured that out. And maybe even SEGA arguably, who also has figured that out, too, considering they have third-party ROM hacks on Steam Workshop.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Of course, I think Nintendo's heritage, history, etc. makes it clear that it would be unlikely for them, any time soon, to take pages out of anyone else's book. Obviously, Valve is just a very different company, and PC gaming is a very different market. I think, though, that a lot of people believe it would be damaging to Nintendo's brand and lose them money if they were more open and fostered this sort of thing, but I think it's hyperbole, I don't see it. In all likelihood, if Nintendo keeps making great video games, people will probably keep buying them, even begrudgingly, just like many people do today, regardless of whether they're dicks to people or they're not.
Stubbornness can be good sometimes, but it definitely leads people and entities to pick fights that are pretty much unwinnable. Eventually, they're going to have to find the line.
(P.S.: I do actually agree though that there is truth, 100%, to the idea that piracy could substantially hurt sales; I think Nintendo is the only company to have experienced tangible evidence of this, with the Nintendo DS and readily available R4 flash cartridge. THAT SAID: If you don't buy a Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch cartridges, you can't play online; the console and cartridges/downloaded games have unique IDs online, AFAIK. I think that this is probably effective anti-piracy. Sure, people COULD pirate a single player game from Nintendo, but getting a Steam Deck instead of a Switch seems unlikely; If you're a Nintendo fan, you are not going to get as much value out of running a Steam Deck with emulators. I posit that the majority of people will wind up buying the game, but some of them may also play around with emulation, too. If people really just didn't want to pay for Zelda, a TON of Switch consoles that have the hardware exploit can use the RCM exploit and probably run pirated copies on the real thing with third party modified firmware. The truth is, if backlash from these videos isn't enough to harm their sales, and clearly it isn't, then I suspect the reach of these creators just isn't enough to matter in the first place.)
You also clearly didn't watch the video. A youtuber shows a modded game being run on an emulator, he's adhering to publicly posted policies on what they consider to be fair use, Nintendo went out of their way to be retaliatory (issuing two separate copyright strikes instead of one, and then when he emailed them asking to resolve the situation, did not respond but instead issues dozens more takedowns...including one of him just playing the regular, unmodded game.)
If you want to see extreme examples of this: "ag-gag" laws in the midwest states where there are criminal penalties for disseminating video from slaughter houses that counters the industry's marketing efforts that portray the process as humane and painless, when the process is neither, and in fact employees go out of their way to be abusive to the animals.
Individual free speech is critical to balance the incredible power corporations now have, especially post Citizens United.
What's next? Car companies being able to take down car review videos where the reviewer doesn't tow the line? Or someone is using their car in a way the car company doesn't like? Or modding it to have more power? Or using a scan tool to turn on a feature it didn't come programmed to do originally? Taking down news videos where someone uses a dorF G-350 pickup truck to ram a bunch of pedestrians, because it might look bad for their company?
Even if this is true, though, I am pretty sure that videos on topics like "Breath of the Wild multiplayer" absolutely appeal to Nintendo consumers, even younger ones. Thinking about all of the schoolyard banter and rumors about video games, I can only imagine how crazy it is that these days, some of the wild "what if?" scenarios are actually made true by skilled, motivated fans. I do not play many video games these days, so admittedly it is hard for me to be sure. However, I have seen the way that kids respond to this DMCA garbage, and I have never gotten any impression other than that it feels like a great injustice and an unfortunate reality.
If Nintendo really didn't care about the demographic of these videos, then it truly begs the question why they care so much to suppress it. They also were doing the same thing when it came to videos of Switch games running on the Valve Steam Deck.
Clearly, they have some motivated interest.
I think this is deceiving. Sure, in terms of raw numbers there are a good number of adult gamers. But I'd like to see this statistic play-time-weighted.
This, however, is a completely different problem that has nothing to do with the products themselves, it's Nintendo's legal team showing absolutely no mercy towards their own content creators, which also includes teenagers, for very little gain... Which is a damn shame, because the work these content creators do is amazing. Instead of sending C&Ds and squandering that potential, Nintendo should work with these people.
A lot of this gains them nothing other than resentment.
I think it's not apparent that Nintendo actually has to behave this way. There is a general notion that other game developers fall elsewhere on the spectrum, with SEGA falling on the more permissive end (though notably, they are not free of drama from DMCA takedowns, but they have a much better reputation of being lax, working with fans, and generally just having better PR overall. I did receive a DMCA takedown request from SEGA once, and yet I can attest to this all still.)
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--W8ZYHe9...
The hate is worthless in Nintendo's eyes: All that matters is whether or not they'll keep buying <Insert Nintendo product here>. And for most people, they'll continue to buy 'em.
Unless their revenue significantly suffers, it will be business as usual.
For example, not a game I really have any interest in, but I know Hogwarts Legacy had possibly the strongest backlash I've seen in recent memory and yet it sold gangbusters according to media. Then there's Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard, who are definitely becoming some of the most hated game developers in the industry, and yet, they seem to be doing just fine.
Nintendo is a beloved company in spite of these antics, so I don't ever expect it to matter more for them. I still challenge the notion that this PR backlash doesn't have any cost and will never have more cost. Probably the largest immediate issue with PR backlash like this is simply that it hurts employee morale.
Does it really not matter? Well, speaking of Super Smash Bros, they pretty much killed the Panda Cup and most of the rest of the official events with their antics, and probably guaranteed that the SSBM community will never touch Nintendo sanctioned anything again. Not surprising, really, given that's pretty much how it always has been with them, but on the other hand, isn't it kind of crazy? Nintendo barely has any official competitive tournaments, even though they have at least a couple of games with decently big community scenes world-wide. Compare any other fighting game or even just other large franchises like Fortnite and I can't help like they blew many potential opportunities that could've provided value in at least O(millions) of dollars.
It changes nothing. It’s not a nightmare. It’s not even problematic for them.
Of course, nobody is suggesting that Nintendo is going to go bankrupt because they were mean to some YouTubers who ostensibly didn't do anything wrong, but just because there's no easy way to quantify the impact does not mean it will never matter. It does matter.
I promise you, they are not sitting there thinking "Alright yeah! A bunch of people are really pissed off at us! High fives all around, this is exactly what we aim to do here at Nintendo!"
Despite that, there could be a handful of people with influential roles in the company who consider this to be a part of doing business. To your point, those same people would likely still know about this situation (rather, the general situation around copyright / marketing) and understand why they make the decisions they make while still being genuinely concerned with the trade-offs. To your parent commenter's point, that doesn't mean this is any sort of crisis (or "nightmare") to the most influential decision-makers at Nintendo; it's just part of their job.
I disagree that it is a complete non-issue, though.
It just doesn’t matter.
Google’s reputation does matter. Because you’re giving them data and relying on their services. If they cancel that service or do something bad with your data you are gonna have a bad time.
If Nintendo shuts down a streamer… whatever. Doesn’t affect 99.99999% of customers. Or employees.
My main problem with Nintendo is that their game systems are too difficult for young children to actually use.
But I feel like they took this kind of play from the Sony playbook.