After years of being relatively vague on its position of how its games can be used by content creators, Microsoft has finally come out with a full set of formalized rules that all who want use their games for Let’s Plays, streams and machinimas will have to abide by.
The rules are far more lax than Nintendo’s previous stance of “No.” The rules allow for monetization through ads on Twitch and Youtube specifically, so don’t worry, your favorite streamers and let’s players will still be able to make their content. They will, however, no longer be able to create content with Microsoft games and then hide them behind a paywall or use any other methods to make money with said content, other than asking for donations.
The rest of the rules are pretty fair such as “don’t make offensive things like pornography, racist things or racist pornography” (yes, I’m paraphrasing) and “don’t bundle content with spyware and adware.” Also the following sentence:
[Name of the Microsoft Game] © Microsoft Corporation. [The title of your Item] was created under Microsoft’s “Game Content Usage Rules” using assets from [Name of the Microsoft Game], and it is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft.
Needs to be somewhere that consumers of content can easily reach and read like a README file or video description. All Microsoft games will follow these rules except for Minecraft, which has its own set of rules formalized by Mojang before it was bought out by Microsoft.
It is also important to note that some of the larger content producers, like Rooster Teeth Productions, already have standing agreements with Microsoft on the usage of the Halo series in Rooster Teeth’s Red Vs Blue series and that these rules affect smaller content producers more than larger, more organized ones.
You can read the new rules in its entirety right here.
- This article was updated on March 8th, 2018
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