Nintendo Co. Ltd. has never been big on the western fan video community, whether its Let’s Play videos on YouTube or livestreaming matches on Twitch, and now the Japanese game maker has made it even harder for YouTube content creators to make videos using Nintendo games.

The company created the Nintendo Creators Program, which works like a registry for approved Nintendo content creators. Anyone who wants to make videos with Nintendo games must first register either their entire YouTube channel or an individual video and wait for it to be approved before the content can be made available to the public.

As an additional restriction, YouTube channels can only be registered if their library of videos contain Nintendo’s whitelisted games and nothing else. Any videos of non-Nintendo games will instantly disqualify a channel from being registered as a whole, forcing YouTubers to request individual approval every time they make a new Nintendo video, a process that can take several days.

New policy “a slap in the face”

YouTube celebrity Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg, who runs the most-subscribed channel on YouTube, took to his Tumblr account to vent his frustration with the new system.

“I also think this is a slap in the face to the YouTube channels that does focus on Nintendo game exclusively,” Kjellberg wrote. “The people who have helped and showed passion for Nintendo’s community are the ones left in the dirt the most.”

Nintendo’s whitelist of approved games also contains a few glaring omissions, namely the entire Super Smash Bros. series, which is one of the most popular franchises for video content creators.

The new program has had a slow start with significant delays in approval times. “Due to your enthusiasm for the program, we’re receiving a higher volume of applications to register channels & videos than expected,” Nintendo wrote on the Creators Program page. “It is taking longer than we anticipated to confirm the applications. We appreciate your patience as we work through them as quickly as possible.”

As Nintendo continues throwing hurdles in front of fans who want to make videos of their games, they might find that fewer and fewer content creators will find the process worthwhile.

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