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The greenlight has been given to gamers to monetise footage of their Xbox gameplay on YouTube and Twitch.
Microsoft has granted users personal, non-exclusive, non-sublicenseable, non-transferable, revocable, limited license” to use game content to generate ad revenue on both video services.
Any content not posted to YouTube of Twitch, however, cannot be monetised, although it can be used on pages asking for donations.
And although owned by Microsoft, Minecraft is not covered by these new terms and is now governed by a separate set of rules.
The rules are limited to Microsoft owned IP and even then there are exceptions, with Microsoft citing Forza 5 and Xbox Fitness as examples of titles that include content (namely certain cars or fitness videos and/or brands) where certain permissions need to be sought from the IP owner.
There are a host of rules covering the dos and don’ts, with things like the reverse engineering of assets and the creation of lewd content being prohibited. There are also some specific requirements concerning the use of IP branding in video titles.
You can read it all here.
We know that people like you – gamers, fans, individuals, and enthusiasts – love our games and sometimes want to use things like gameplay footage, screenshots, music, and other elements of our games to make things like machinima, videos, and other cool things,” the company said.
We’d like to make that easier to do for fans of our games. So long as you can respect these rules, you can use our Game Content to make your Items.”
The position is in contrast to Nintendo which last year placed a stringent revenue-sharing requirement upon those wanting to stream its titles.
