Many streamers, whether from YouTube or Twitch, have gained a large community of followers by recording themselves playing video games. These creators record themselves while sharing their games. This practice is commonplace, and we've even seen some of the most popular faces in the industry post videos featuring games that haven't yet been released. Of course, as a scoop and with prior agreement with the company.
However, not all 'gamers' have this favor and, until now, this type of practice was not regulated. And it is until now because in Japan the melon has been opened with the arrest of the 52-year-old streamer, Shinobu Yoshida, a resident of the town of Nagoya, for violating copyright.
The arrest came after various companies sued Yoshida for gutting the content of various video games; a practice popularly known as spoiler. One of the affected products is the graphic novel Steins; Gate: My Darling's Embrace. According to Anime News Network, the youtuber had been uploading images for several years, at least since 2019.
In the video that the streamer published, he showed much of the development of the story, as well as its end. This made the game less attractive, and therefore it lost market value. In addition, the videos of the arrestee in which they seemed the most interesting parts of the graphic novel were monetized and he earned advertising revenue with it. Something that the company has also taken into account at the time of making the complaint for owning the rights to the product, KADOKAWA and others, according to the Organization for the Promotion of Content Distribution Abroad of Japan, CODA.
JapanToday notes that Yoshida admitted to the charges. In his statement, he said: "I knew it was illegal, even when he was doing it." For its part, and after this statement, the CODA stated that, "in principle", any use of game videos requires the permission of the rights holder.
