I used to prefer Vimeo over YouTube. Vimeo was always a bit better in quality, had a nicer looking player and website. Most importantly, it had a more mature and tasteful community. So when I released my game TRAUMA, it was a no-brainer to publish the trailer for it on Vimeo. It was an arty project that was made exactly for the kind of audience I would meet on Vimeo.

Today, I’m regretting that decision.

How about if I show some tits?

The first warning signs was a dispute I had back when I uploaded a gameplay preview of the game for the IGF. I used Vimeo back then for the same reasons. When the video was hit by the IGF traffic, I was contacted by the Vimeo staff. Unbeknown to me, uploading gameplay videos was a big no-no for Vimeo in general. My video was taken down immediately – exactly during the small window when having it online mattered. In a lengthy discussion, I had to explain myself that I was actually the author of the game and that the video was meant to show my work. The video got put back up eventually, but the damage was done.

I should have been wary of using Vimeo back then. A company so rigorous about game-related videos is hardly a safe haven for a game developer. But foolishly, I thought that just having each video properly credited would be enough. It seemed like the anti-game community guideline was only in place to outlaw “Let’s Play”-style videos, where people record playing games.

Fast-forward to a few days ago. I was lucky enough to get TRAUMA to be released as part of the Humble Indie Bundle, a pay-what-you-want charity/indie fundraiser with an extremely high traffic volume. My web site was hit with up to 30k views per day – three times as much as during launch. I was worrying that my web host would give up. It didn’t. But Vimeo did. Again.

I received the following E-Mail from rights@vimeo.com:

We see that you are using Vimeo for gameplay videos. We’re sorry, but as stated in our Terms and Conditions of Use

http://vimeo.com/terms, on our Community Guidelines

http://vimeo.com/guidelines page, and on the upload page itself,

gameplay videos are not allowed on Vimeo Basic or Plus accounts. If you

wish to continue using Vimeo to upload this type of content, you *must*

use Vimeo PRO http://vimeo.com/pro> At this time, you can purchase Vimeo PRO and continue using Vimeo to

host your content, or take the next *72 hours* to back up your videos or

move them to another host more suitable to your needs. *Purchase PRO* If you take no action, your account will be removed in automatically in

72 hours.

That sounded like the same issue as the last time. So I tried to refer to the last E-Mail exchange. I received the follwing explanation:

… things have changed since your last exchange with *former contact on Vimeo*, as we now have Vimeo PRO: http://vimeo.com/pro

Because your videos are commercial in nature, you must have a PRO account: http://vimeo.com/pro_guidelines

As far as gaming videos are concerned, you must have a PRO account if you wish to upload game trailers and gameplay videos. Videos showing the development of a game (before and after shots, explaining the creation process) are still ok with a Plus account.

Please let me know if/when you purchase PRO.

So it seems like the fact that I had a trailer on my account was a problem this time around. This is weird because there are plenty of movie and game trailers on Vimeo. And the PRO account is not a bagatelle. It costs 200$ per year, that’s actually more than I pay for my web host that hosts the ACTUAL GAME. But believing that this would the the bitter pill to swallow, I decided to get the PRO account to set things straight once for all. I mean, they mentioned it like 4 times in that one paragraph, right?

But it didn’t help. My videos were working again, but they couldn’t be accessed on the Vimeo website. You see, the PRO account is pretty much a pure hosting service, quite distinct from the actual Vimeo website. The PRO account allows to upload pretty much any content, but that content won’t be available on the Vimeo website. As a PRO user, you can request individual videos to be shown on the Vimeo website, which is called a “Community Pass”. But in oder to be eligible for one, the video in question needs to follow the community guidelines i.e. no gameplay videos, no game trailers. So when I asked for the Videos to be put up back again I got the following response:

I’m sorry, I was mistaken on the status of your videos. They have not been removed, they are simply hidden from Vimeo.com, as you are a PRO user with the Community Pass off (http://vimeo.com/help/faq#community_pass). Because your videos are commercial in nature, you will be required for them to stay this way. Sorry for the confusion.

Keep mind that I had 3 videos and only one of them was a trailer. The others were the IGF gameplay preview that was cleared by Vimeo previously and a much older talk I gave on a different topic. ALL of the videos were removed from the Vimeo website.

But you don’t need to look for too long to see that there are plenty of game trailers on Vimeo. Why? Well, because the Vimeo guy I had to deal with was plainly wrong. The Community Guidelines say explicitly that indie developers are excluded from the “commercial use” clause:

But of course now, the Humble Indie Bundle promotion is over and the trailer was offline for over 3 days during the most crucial time. Again. I might eventually get to a person at Vimeo, who recognizes the mistake and puts the videos back up. But I lost time, nerves and money dealing with all this. Most importantly, Vimeo let me down again when I needed them most. I have no reason to believe they won’t let me down again.

And all this time I can’t help thinking that this was because I’m working with games. If I was a fimmaker, this is issue would never crop up. But games have to constantly defend their status as a way of creative expression. When creating games, you are by default suspected of either selling out or producing nothing of value what so ever. Or both.

For me this is a more serious issue than the Rogert Ebert debate. Roger Ebert was just one old guy stating an opinion about something he knows little about. This is an institutionalised disbelief in games as vessels of culture and meaning. It has real consequences for people, who want to make games. Ironically, especially games that challenge that very notion.

So if you are a game developer, I recommend you to consider this the next time when you chose a place to host your videos.

UPDATE:: http://gamedesignreviews.com/scrapbook/vimeo-situation-update/