When game critic Jim Sterling uses video clips of the games he reviews on YouTube, the game companies claim copyright ownership of the video and run ads on Sterling's reviews. He doesn't like that because his videos are funded by Patreon and he doesn't think his audience should have to see ads. So what he does now is add video clips from other game publishers' titles. This causes the different companies to battle for control of the video, and they both lose out.
"I figured every time I talk about Nintendo, I'm going to throw in other stuff that gets flagged by Content ID, and just watch the corporations battle it out," Sterling said. His hope was that by pulling this stunt, he could stop any company from monetizing the video at all, since it wouldn't be clear who really owned the footage in the first place. And if anybody did manage to monetize the video, they'd probably only get peanuts for it.
The scheme panned out just the way he thought it would, Jim Sterling tells Kotaku.
