Atlus dictates terms to Persona 5 streamers

Atlus is the latest publisher to attempt restricting the way its games are shown on YouTube and Twitch. The company's long-awaited PlayStation RPG Persona 5 launched today to tremendous reviews and a warning to those who would reveal too much of the story-driven game online.

"Simply put, we don't want the experience to be spoiled for people who haven't played the game," the company wrote in a streaming guidelines post on its website. "Our fans have waited years for the game to come out and we really want to make sure they can experience it fully as a totally new adventure."

To that end, Atlus has blocked the PS4's native sharing functionality and asked that YouTube posters limit their videos to 90 minutes and avoid major story spoilers and most boss fights. Additionally, they insisted any such videos prominently featured the game's dungeon crawling and leisure time in Tokyo, not just cutscenes and animated sequences. As for those who would stream the game, Atlus said the same limits apply, except for the length restriction.

"This being a Japanese title with a single-playthrough story means our masters in Japan are very wary about it," the post explained.

While some of the guidelines were presented as a request, Atlus clearly believes it's worth mandating compliance with others.

"If you decide to stream past [the in-game date] 7/7 (I HIGHLY RECOMMEND NOT DOING THIS, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED), you do so at the risk of being issued a content ID claim or worse, a channel strike/account suspension," the company said.

Publishers and developers of all kinds have had some difficulty in coming to grips with the advent of YouTube and Twitch, from Nintendo claiming monetization rights on videos with the aforementioned content ID claims to That Dragon, Cancer's developers bemoaning the impact such videos can have on small, story-driven games.