Gaming Twitter has lit up today thanks to a tweet by Montreal Studio Creative Director of Stadia Games and Entertainment, Alex Hutchinson. He joined Stadia as part of the purchase of Typhoon Studios.
Hutchison tweeted about how “streamers should be paying the developers and publishers of the games they stream.” This hot take sparked outrage, as it opens the conversation about the relationship between game publishers and content creators- and it’s something many folks disagree with.
This tweet, at the time of writing, has garnered 16.5K quote tweets, 565 retweets, and 16K replies. Most of them against this opinion.
The sad part is that this one tweet alone by a Stadia employee has eclipsed all the attention that Stadia’s official Twitter has garnered in the past three days, where they have lined up a few game announcements in what is dubbed “Good Stuff”.
In a statement to 9to5Google, a Google spokesperson has this to say on the matter:
The recent tweets by Alex Hutchinson, creative director at the Montreal Studio of Stadia Games and Entertainment, do not reflect those of Stadia, YouTube or Google.
YouTube’s lead on “Gaming, Commerce, & Immersive,” Ryan Wyatt, has also offered a statement in support of streamers and content creators, further distancing Google’s stance from Hutchinson’s opinion.
In a way, Stadia did get talked about this week, but not due to their lineup of upcoming games and limited-time demo offers.
On another note, while it may be true that streaming a video game could be subject to copyright- various game publishers make the effort to allow not only content creation using their games, but also monetise the content. YouTuber GamerZakh has a nice thread linking to pages where publishers explicit give this permission.
Source: 9to5Google