Our live radio broadcasts are currently on hiatus while we work on improvements to Sanitarium.FM's core services. For further information, visit our Discord.
One of the biggest stories to happen in the online gaming community in the last few days has been the debacle of the ‘Content ID claim wave’ currently going down right now on Youtube. Hundreds of videos have already been flagged, mainly it seems for music and sound matching third-party claims, blocking them in many countries and having a massive effect on content creators, some even belonging to one of Youtube’s many partner programs who are meant to stop this sort of thing happening to the people they sign up.
User AngryJoeShow, a content creator who belongs to prominent gaming network Polaris, itself a sub-network of partner giant Maker Studios is among the people who have been hit with the new sweep and true to his name… he wasn’t happy.
To summarise, in the video Joe accuses Youtube and Google of literally ‘screwing’ the content creators now that they have made the company an awful lot of money. Given that he is one of many people who are literally making their living by uploading videos reviewing the content that is now being claimed, and that he is within Polaris who should be offering him protection from this sort of event his anger seems justified. He also makes the point that if this system is as heavy-hitting as it’s seeming to be, it could be very hard for new, smaller gaming channels to get a foothold on Youtube anymore.
However, another Polaris creator, MaskedGamer lays the blame at a different door.
In this video MaskedGamer accuses the same networks that are meant to have protected the people they signed up of being lazy and not managing those they sign up and of greed by signing up loads of small channels just to make money from them. He says that they, Polaris included, have lied to many of the people they’ve signed up and now are refusing to release the channels because these channels are now locked into contracts that were re-signed mid-2013 and that this is why Youtube have put in place the new system: to force the partner networks into actually doing what they were set up to do in the first place and manage their users’ content first and foremost.
Another theory as to why there’s been a sudden wave of claims is that the legal troubles between National Music Publishers’ Association and Youtube network Fullscreen has caused Youtube to actually really crack down on this sort of thing.
Outside of Youtube many of the companies supposedly making these claims have come out and replied that they are just as confused as the Youtube users as to why all these claims are being issued, saying that they themselves are not responsible for submitting the claims. A few of them, Blizzard, Ubisoft and Capcom prominently among them, have even posted on their official websites and social network accounts that if one of your videos with a claim contains content from them that you can contact the companies with a link to the video and they will do their best to remove the claims. However although admitting they didn’t issue the claims themselves, Nintendo has reportedly been denying claims made on videos containing content from them.
As always the centre of this issue is once again the question of copyright and fair-use laws, and where the line is drawn between the two. It’s widely accepted that some of the current law surrounding copyright is in need of revision given the grown of new media and new ways to distribute content. Gaming reviews can be seen as giving promotion to companies and games which are a benefit to the people who make the content, but the question is whether the people doing the reviewing should be able to make money from that. The game reviewing scene right now is quite big and as seen with popular reviewers like TotalBiscuit can make or break a game, and some reviewers have made a career from gaming reviews. Game reviewing like any other business has costs to be covered. What this entire episode demonstrates more than anything else is the need for a safe mid-ground to be agreed which benefits both the companies and the reviewers.
Hot on the heels of Starbound’s last big update comes their latest patch entitled “Indignant Koala”.
The patch comes with many fixes as well as an awful lot of balancing. Among the things balanced are the strength of early armours such as copper, the effectiveness of shields (which had a tendacy to be useless before) and melee weaponry. The update also nerfed ‘bird’-type monsters to reduce their projectile range as well as to stop them chasing players across a map and made players invincible in their own ships (an update that comes as a result of traps being set on the telepad spawn point in a ship leading to a character never being able to respawn at all). Although this isn’t a wipe-patch, it’s being recommended that players start a new game to be able to experience the new balances implemented.
Velocity Ultra by developer Futurlabs is a well-celebrated game already, having been quite popular on its original release on the Playstation Vita thanks to its interesting gameplay mechanics, fast pace and cool if not complicated graphics. The game is now being released on Steam by Curve Studios and I managed to get hold of a Steam code to see if this game had survived well on the trip between platforms.
For those of you who haven’t heard of the game, Velocity Ultra is a top-down space game that has you boosting, flying and teleporting your way around levels rescuing survivors while destroying hostile ships and security turrets with laser gun and bombs. The teleporting feature is used to move between areas that would usually be blocked off and although you can’t get hurt from banging into walls (which is unique in itself), the screen does move along with you and doesn’t stop if you do so try not to get crushed by the moving screen!
Now I’ve never had a Vita, so I’ve never played the original game but Ultra doesn’t seem to have suffered for the move. The graphics are crisp, the movement fluid and fast, the music great and the levels nicely challenging. The game starts with a launcher window that lets you choose windowed or fullscreen modes as well as having a tab to show the key bindings for each action, which I assume you can change. There’s also a diagram to show the button bindings for a controller which I think must be the better way to play the game. I didn’t do too badly with my keyboard and trackpad though and found myself unable to resist playing just one more level. Once you get into a rhythm the levels go amazingly smoothly and it’s this that keeps the game interesting. Just as it did the original from what I’ve heard.
Velocity Ultra will be available on Steam from December 12th.
Yesterday Mojang released the update that many have been waiting for since the announcement of it at Minecon last month, the 1.7.4 update that contains Twitch integration to allow players to stream Minecraft from within game.
I covered the first snapshot of this update a few weeks ago (linked at the end of this article) so I can confirm that the integration of the streaming website’s features is nicely optimised to work well with Minecraft. From within the options menu you can toggle and tweak video, broadcast, server and chat settings all from within game, the chat settings being an especially good idea in my view as someone who has had to moderate busy Twitch stream chatrooms before now. You can even choose to turn off the chat showing in-game altogether if you prefer not to see what’s being said.
The other major things in this update are the expected bug fixes and patches and fixing an issue with render distance not working correctly over 8.
I expect to see this new update being quite popular with the part of Mojang’s customer base who are very into streaming their Minecraftian adventures. I know I’ll certainly be making use of it if I can.
![Godzilla [2014]](https://www.sanitarium.fm/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Godzilla-2014.jpg)
