
Firewatch review bombed on Steam following DMCA takedown against PewDiePie - brad0
http://www.pcgamer.com/firewatch-is-getting-review-bombed-on-steam/
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brad0
I really hope that the devs actions don't become a common occurrence.

If the dev asked YouTube to take down all content that had his games in it I
think it would be okay. To target just one user because of a word that he said
non maliciously is wrong.

If you take a look at the developer website they explicitly say "it's okay for
you to stream our game".
[http://www.firewatchgame.com/about/#streaming](http://www.firewatchgame.com/about/#streaming)

Edit: added link to their site stating their attitude for streamers.

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marak830
I disagree, it isn't the first time he has done something like this, and it
isn't something you would want related to your product(even loosely).

The argument made by the game company is fairly straightforward too I believe.

"I am sick of this child getting more and more chances to make money off of
what we make. He's worse than a closeted racist: he's a propagator of
despicable garbage that does real damage to the culture around this industry."

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Mikhail_Edoshin
So there were no copyright infringement but now there is, and only by that
guy, other streamers are OK? That's funny. This is a misuse of the law and a
markedly unethical behavior, why nobody sees it?

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Hasknewbie
A developer, if they so wish, can allow third-parties the use of their
property in some use-cases that are beyond "critique or satire".

In this case FWD allows this explicitly for youtubers in general, but have
withdrawn this permission to PDP in particular because they do not wish to see
their product associated with a racist.

How is this a "misuse of the law"? Please explain.

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ssijak
Even if they wanted to remove him the rights to use their game, they should
have warned him first to remove it himself and if he did not comply then it
will be somewhat moral to dmca him. Without warning he did not break dmca
because they say on their website that it is ok to stream their game for
everyone.

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DanBC
> they should have warned him first to remove it himself

Why?

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detaro
Because it's good form to tell someone if you intend to take a right you
granted them away before you use legal tools against them?

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DanBC
Good form is for every day people, it's not for people behaving like massive
fucking bellends.

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Toboe
So, according to the article:

1) Developer revokes streaming license of asshole.

2) Developer gets down-vote-brigaded, with most of them (43 out of last 50)
having 0 hours played, and called "sjw" by "snowflakes" (to use their
parlance) upset about said revocation.

Besides the face-palm worthy outrage, what does Steam think about 0-hours-
played reviews?

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wetpaws
There is no such thing as a streaming license.

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Toboe
Mea culpa, mentally replace with whatever phrasing best describes: the dev
changes their mind on "fan streaming is cool" to "fan streaming is cool,
besides PDP, who sucks and shouldn't use our products in his streams".

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apostacy
I'm confused. It appears that the justification for this DMCA was that they
felt that PewDiePie was making their product look bad.

Are you really allowed to DMCA anything that makes your product look bad?
Because that would surely include criticism of your product.

If that is the case, then that is a very bad precedent to set. Companies like
Warner Bros were forced to issue refunds for their buggy game Arkham Knight[1]
because people uploaded videos to YouTube which made their product look bad.

PewDiePie himself, along with many other YouTubers, did severe damage to
Warner Bros brand, when he uploaded video of himself trying to play their
buggy game. I suppose Warner Bros should have DMCA'd his videos.

[1] [http://www.pcgamer.com/warner-bros-is-suspending-sales-of-
ba...](http://www.pcgamer.com/warner-bros-is-suspending-sales-of-batman-
arkham-knight-for-pc/)

~~~
detaro
No, you are not allowed to DMCA anything that makes your product look bad,
e.g. a game critique/review likely can use game footage under under fair use.

For a normal game stream the assumption seems to be that fair use likely won't
work, so those can be DMCAd for the simple reason of "using our material and
we don't like it/haven't allowed it".

In this specific case, they publicly gave permission to streamers though, so
it wouldn't be a copyright violation anymore. Question is if they can just go
and revoke that for the individual case. Would need to be tested in court,
which I suspect is unlikely to happen.

~~~
apostacy
I still don't see how Warner Bros could not have used exactly the same
justification to DMCA streamers to cover up their defective product. That's
exactly what Samsung did to people making _jokes_ about their exploding
phones. [1]

Well, I know that I would certainly think twice about streaming any games now,
and risking getting a DMCA strike on my channel. I guess I'd have to watch my
mouth and not say anything that would anger the developers, lest they punish
me.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/samsung-sets-its-
reput...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/10/samsung-sets-its-reputation-
fire-bogus-dmca-takedown-notices)

~~~
detaro
That's the underlying issue to DMCA and how it's implemented: they can DMCA
everything, even if they are in the wrong doing so, since it doesn't really
have bad consequences for them.

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anotheryou
So what racist thing did he say?

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detaro
stream snippet: [https://oddshot.tv/s/g_05U6](https://oddshot.tv/s/g_05U6)

