There will be a branch of government telling them what to do. It will just be the courts, as they’re sued into oblivion by IP rights holders.

Just to be clear, publishers don’t like reviewers, either. They’re seen as gatekeepers of audiences and people to be managed and bribed, and that means keeping the reviewer market small. They want reviewers to be PR people with a fascade of being impartial, and few enough to count on one hand.

This is also somwthing that’s happening, then, because Nintendo sees a pathway to victory. Not only are their games licensed only for their own hardware, but they can claim the reviews are misleading and invalid because the games aren’t designed to run on the platforms they’re beinf reviewed on.

Like, none of this is Nintendo coming for your emulation catalogue. It’s them coming for people trying to generate an income from their games. And all of the big publishers are going to line up behind them on this, because they also hate anyone who’s making coin using their creation.

That’s capitalism. That’s what it means for something to be capital, and to own it. It’s what owning the means of production is all about.

This is not about the legality of emulation, unfortunately, but about whether people have the rights to publish lets plays without a license.

Many suits in the gaming industry see lets plays as theft. They see people making money using their games and believe lets players should have to pay to license thst content, and that they should have the right to revoke that license if they don’t like what people are saying about or doimg with their games.

I work in the industry, and I know people who work or who have worked at studios owned by every major punlisher in the west. This is a thing they all habe someone of import chomping at the bit for.

It’s just that none of them want to be the one singled out as the first or only one attacking lets plays. Nor to be the one that shoulders the costs of having their position challenged in court.

This can’t be a new thing. This was one of the conditions Nintendo announced when they dropped their stupid “register with us to be allowed to do lets plays” thing.

Oh, and it’s not just Nintendo. All of the big publishers believe they own your videos that use their games. I’ve been involved in discussions with people personally who were trying to figure out how to demand licensing fees from YouTubers.

This is goingnto get worse before it gets better. This has been a traffic jam caused by everyone waiting for somebody to go first. Nintendo is just the one who has volunteered to be the first mover.

Not who you replied to, but I’ve experienced it on both vanilla Element and on Schildichat over and over, as well as repeated logouts that require signin approval from one of my other active sessions.

That are on devices on different floors of the house, or even in different parts of the city.

Shit’s jankey as hell.

And is just an extension to their licensing nonsense and publishing deals thst came beforex

Anyone surprised by any of this doesn’t care about Nintendo’s behaviour, just the impact the current move is having on their current fun.

A lot of games developers don’t understand trends in gaming that aren’t explicitly gamist. Even as walking sinulators and cozy games have garnered audiences that make those genres viable, many in the industry have refused to actually look at them with an eye to understand who they appeal to, why, and what about them is doing the connecting with their audiences.

I worked on a mobile PvP project that rejected purely aesthetic elements because none of the director, designer, not “monetization specialist” could understand why anyone would want them, even as Fortnite was bursting onto the scene making its money on its emotes and paper doll elements.

Art driven paper doll games were also eating our lunch in the mobile space.

There are clearly some in the industry who understand the appeal, but most of them are not decision makers in development studios. The decision makers got there by coming up in a much more focused, much less casual, much less inclusive era in gaming, and have a pretty fixed idea of what a game “is” or “is supposed to be”.

Because of this,aAs things shift towards more IP licensing deal, the results are going to be a lot of conflicts between tone and gameplay on these projects.

Is great until you need a job. It solves the 2 language problem right up until you’re working with others.