Fish: YouTubers should pay devs

Phil Fish is back in the news today after suggesting that YouTubers creating Let's Play content using video games should be giving developers a "huge portion" of their profits, saying that anything else is "basically piracy".

"YouTubers should have to pay out a huge portion of their revenue to the developers from which they steal all their content," Fish said on Twitter (and via GameSpot). "[Ad] revenue should be shared with developers. This should be built into YouTube. Anything else is basically piracy."

It's not the first time the developer has got into arguments on Twitter (he seems to have deleted his account this time, hence the absence of a link). The Fez creator responded to previous harassment on social media by cancelling the development of Fez II. However, in this case he continued his point:

"If you generate money from putting my content on your channel, you owe me money. Simple as that. If you buy a movie, are you then allowed to stream the entirety of it publicly for people to watch for free? No, because that's illegal. Systems are in place to prevent that."

He then took a more sarcastic tone: "But buy Fez, put ALL of it on YouTube, turn on ads, make money from it and that's TOTALLY FINE. And the developer should in NO WAY be compensated for their work being freely distributed to the world. Right. Makes sense."

Fish's vocal stance on the subject comes shortly after the news YouTuber PewDiePie made a staggering £2.48 million from his broadcasts last year.