Nintendo Finally Reveals Affilate Program, It's Not Good

Let it never be said I don’t keep my promises.

Way back in May of 2014, I promised ya’ll I’d keep an eye on the budding Nintendo Affiliate Program and how it develops; well now, January 29th, Nintendo has finally revealed its finalized program to the world at large. And the terms are, unfortunately, only slightly better than ‘not allowing videos at all’.

Here’s how it works: you sign up for Nintendo’s Affiliate program, and you can either register an entire channel or an individual video up for their approval. Once it gets accepted, the youtuber in question earns 60% of ad revenue for individual videos, while entire channels signed up for the program get 70%. Alright, so, on the surface, that looks alright; but since this is a binding legal thing, of course it goes deeper than that.

For one, it says in the terms that Nintendo can change those numbers arbitrarily, at will, at any time. Potentially, they could even change the numbers for individual videos, so if you posted a video making all of the money, they cold go ahead and say “yeah, this is all ours from here on out”. Secondly, it details that ALL videos with Nintendo-related gaming content has to sign up for this program, it includes more… awkward videos, such as reviews or critiques. Presumably, if Nintendo doesn’t like your review, it can reduce you advertising earnings, or worse. Additionally, if this video review was produced by a major gaming website, like, say, Gamespot, does it still get a cut of the revenue?

Thirdly, it says it can take upwards of three business days for individual videos to be approved by Nintendo for the program; when your livelihood depends on your youtube videos, three days wait can be a massive problem, especially if you were, say, producing a multi-part Lets Play, or a review. Three days without a review is effectively leaving customers blind… which would make this program doubly benefit Nintendo.

While it’s inarguable better than nothing, it’s also still not very good, and Youtube personalities have already started protesting the program. Still, its what we have for now—if Nintendo plans to change it, it’ll be a while before we find out. And I’ll report it, if they do. As promised.