The above tweets were the first many of us knew of the problems that TotalBiscuit had been having for the last few days with one of his videos on Day One: Garry's Incident being copyright claimed.
Today, we got the full explanation from the man in video form.
TotalBiscuit of course is a very popular Youtuber and a respected game reviewer. A lot of people listen to him and his 'WTF is...?' series was set up for the express purpose of reviewing games so that people could avoid the pitfall of buying a game that might not be for them, or in some cases just plain bad. That was the series that reviewed the aforementioned game, a review that was very critical of the game, then became copyright claimed and taken down through Youtube's copyright claim system, with claims being made from Wild Games Studio's CEO Stephane that TB didn't have the right to place ads onto the video and make money from a video containing their content.
TotalBiscuit of course is licensed to monetise his videos through the network he is a part of: Polaris, formerly known as The Game Station. Agreements were reached that the networks would police their members to ensure copyright standards were met and in return game content could be fairly used for things such as commentaries and reviews. However copyright claims can still be made by companies which will result in videos instantly being taken down and a strike issued against the account unless they can successfully appeal or, as in TotalBiscuit's case, have a network backing them up to help get the strikes removed (TB previously got two against his account for old Sega-based content about a year back which were removed).
In the video TB makes a number of points with aid of screencaps of e-mail messages and forums posts that show that Wild Games Studio had opportunity to check out TB's other WTF is...? videos (all monetised) and had previously encouraged people to make Youtube videos of their game. He also notes that other, less popular critical video reviews had not been removed. Only his, which of course reaches many people because of his large audience.
Kotaku have since contacted Wild Game Studios for a comment on the video and have been told that “after seeing all the negative impact today we decided to withdraw our complaint to YouTube.”
Regardless, although people might not always agree with TotalBiscuit's opinions, he is a man who backs up his views with evidence and in the video he makes a very good case against Wild Game Studios. The studio might just have messed with the wrong man by taking down the original review...