Sega Goes Nuclear On YouTube Videos Of Old Shining Force Game

from the and-here-comes-the-fallout dept



Pictured: Constitutional DRM

Image source: CC BY 2.0

Sega has a history of being less than friendly to their fans and customers. Recall that they were unable to respond to one customer's concerns about SOPA, other than to ramble on about reboots and hard resets. Then there was their DRM fiasco when an iteration of their popular Football Manager franchise had DRM every bit as functional and effective as Congress.

Well, Sega has apparently decided to buck their trend of being mildly annoying to their fans... by upping the ante and going full-blown fan-screw-crazy. They have apparently been going on a YouTube video take down blitz for anything related to their Shining Force franchise to somehow protect an upcoming PSP release in the series from being... well... maybe they think that... no, that doesn't work... you know what? I don't know what the hell they're afraid of, but they're pooping all over a bunch of fan videos.

Many YouTube channels have already been hit, including that of popular game critic TotalBiscuit, who has since removed all Sega content from his page out of disgust. No type of content was spared -- Let's Plays, walkthroughs, and random gameplay clips all got flagged. Hell, even videos of fans just talking about the Shining series with no accompanying game footage whatsoever are apparently copyright violations!

Remember earlier this year when the Internet took a stand against SOPA / PIPA? This was the kind of nonsense we were fighting against. This is unbelievably bad form. It makes no sense either, because why are just the Saturn Shining games catching most of the heat? Why isn't Sega going after the whole pie? If you are going to be a dick, don't stop in mid-f*ck.

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If you've spent ten seconds searching for any game on YouTube, you know that the plethora of fan videos, playthroughs, and Let's Plays are more abundant than gold rings in a Sonic game. And if the rest of the gaming world is anything like me, and there's a frighteningly good chance that it is, they use those kinds of things to either influence whether they purchase a game or not or to enhance their gaming experience via the walkthroughs. Either way, Sega, yanking those videos offline in some misguided attempt to avoid confusion with a new upcoming game (because everyone knows how easily fooled the rabid fanbase of an RPG franchise is), can only cause anger in established fans/customers and ward off purchases by potential customers who can no longer get a glimpse of what they would be buying.At this point, I would usually make some kind of grand statement mixed with a little vulgarity to wrap all this up into a fine point, but the afore linked Destructoid does it as well or better than I could, so I'll give them the final word:

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, fans, shining force, takedowns

Companies: sega