I love this game, and respect the dev team, but Square Enix crossed a horrible line.

[Onje]

If you think the community needs these videos to grow, then you sir are ignorant. NDA throughout the betas and SE still had to shut down sales to keep servers from melting. This community does not need the bottom feeders. My 2 gil.

If you think it will remain like this after the customary three months of fuzz, you're extremely ignorant. Sorry to say but if you have been on any other game release you will know this. The community and the word of mouth is what will make the game stay fresh to people. Just today I finally managed to sway my fiance to try the game because someone he likes on twitch is playing it. BAM, a new customer who would otherwise never have tried the game. Strange, huh?

[Dungin]

I am a subscriber to both Jesse Cox and Total Biscuit. TB is pretty much over MMO's in general, so I'm not too worried about him. He blathered on about receiving a free game code to review, and whined about having to play 40 hours to do a 'review'. His heart isn't in MMO's even though he made a living off of WoW. He is not affected. Jesse Cox has a bunch of other irons in the fire and will be fine. I am fans of both, but am completely annoyed by them showing us 'how sausage is made...' I do not care about their monetization. They are scared to reveal their paychecks due to losing partnerships, but are perfectly happy whining about monetization policies. They are a bunch of hypocrites on this issue.

[Dungin]

If you think it will remain like this after the customary three months of fuzz, you're extremely ignorant. Sorry to say but if you have been on any other game release you will know this. The community and the word of mouth is what will make the game stay fresh to people. Just today I finally managed to sway my fiance to try the game because someone he likes on twitch is playing it. BAM, a new customer who would otherwise never have tried the game. Strange, huh?

Great, more anecdotal evidence. My friends sister played the game because XXX You Tuber talked about it. There aren't numbers to back this up, there could be just as many people that are turned off of buying a game, making things even out. But even that assumption is not based on evidence so it is moot.

[Onje]

Great, more anecdotal evidence. My friends sister played the game because XXX You Tuber talked about it. There aren't numbers to back this up, there could be just as many people that are turned off of buying a game, making things even out. But even that assumption is not based on evidence so it is moot.

It can go both for the good and for the bad, but still more people are being aware of the game. Besides, and this might be shocking, the MMORPG genre is pretty competative. People like keeping tabs, people like knowing about each other and seeing what other people are doing. People like seeing tips and guides. That's just how we work, and you would know that. I don't give a flying s* about any specific youtuber, even if I follow them, but I do care about the community and the sense of being together about something. This is largely lost when people are scared to share their gameplay or tips etc.

[Aegis]

Good PR is good PR. I don't understand why SE would ever want to shoot themselves in the foot regarding that. It really makes no sense. So what if a youtuber earns a few bucks? One youtuber can bring in perhaps fifteen or twenty new players to SE, increasing their revenue by a lot. I don't really see the differene between a hired reviewer playing the game and posting his opinion, and a freelance reviewer playing the game and posting his opinion. Chances are the latter will have more sway and more experience than the former.

And bad, uninformed PR is terrible for the game's reputation. SE have kept control of who can use their assets when reviewing the game. This means they can place conditions such as 'x number of man-hours spent in game' to prevent uninformed reviews. This quality control simply isn't there in the mass of YT LP'ers who primarily want to entertain their audience to keep them coming back than to provide a duller, well-rounded review.

In your post you in no way mentioned that any of these reviewers could be giving bad press. You seem to only be seeing one side of the coin because that suits your argument. Take a step back and look at it from SE's perspective. They don't need 500,000 reviews where half say its good and half say its bad, they want a couple of dozen that say it's great.

[Quesse]

One example is Jessie Cox, who is a relatively popular Youtube personality who has had a very high opinion of this game for a long time. He has had countless hours of content saved up and was ready to release the floodgates on his channel giving real quality reviews and opinions.
But why would he devote so much time when he has to make a living to praise this game when Square Enix tells him that he can't collect any ad revenue from his videos on it?

This is unacceptable for me, and a selfish ignorant move that needs to be fixed quickly if we're going to expect any news outlets to care enough to talk about this wonderful game.

Another opinion from TotalBiscuit, and more information about the restriction license.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybJr3SDB42Y

Add me to list of people not caring about these guys or this issue. It really isn't that important. Sorry.

[Sheth]

This will come back and bite SE in the ass.

What's astonishing to me is how ignorant people on these forums are.

[Jaxxie]

This is really bad for Square Enix...sure they might be upset of ppl making $$ from their geme...but THEY ARE ADVERTISING IT ASWELL basickly for free. And worst part is SE is not loosing money on this. Square pls for mother of god weak up Its 2013 not 2003!

[Nero]

This is really bad for Square Enix...sure they might be upset of ppl making $$ from their geme...but THEY ARE ADVERTISING IT ASWELL basickly for free. And worst part is SE is not loosing money on this. Square pls for mother of god weak up Its 2013 not 2003!

There are tons of people which are making Videos of the Game, without monetizing it. Is that less advertising than someone making money out of it? It is delusional to believe that noone but those "Internet-Kardashians" are making Videos about FFXIV.

[Rowln]

Don't monetize it is such a simple answer everyone just ignores.