If you have glitches up for GTA V or GTA Online, private or delete those videos. That’s the advice that’s been going around lately after several YouTube accounts have been hit with copyright strikes by Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar Games.
VG 24/7 reported on Rockstar going after YouTubers and having their accounts shutdown. One of those accounts was GoldenGunsGames, who was hit with multiple copyright strikes within the span of just a couple of weeks. Why? He had videos showing you how to exploit unfixed glitches in GTA V.
If you attempt to watch the videos now, you’ll be met with YouTube videos showing the following copyright notices.
Another YouTuber, RazorgamesHD, tweeted out that anyone making glitch videos need to hide, privatize or delete their videos right now!
Any GTA glitcher that still has videos on your channel you are retarded because take 2 are coming for you next. Private all your glitches!
— RazorGamezHD (@RazorGamezHD) June 23, 2016
Meanwhile, GoldenGunsGames has been receiving a lot of hate for Take-Two Interactive shutting down his channel. Many people are blaming him for hosting glitch videos on YouTube, others feel as if Rockstar should have fixed the glitches in GTA Online instead of targeting YouTubers, essentially attacking the symptom instead of the cause.
So not only did i get tweeted out by a 131K Twitter (hatefully) Some website made a article on me (being hateful) https://t.co/figFqWWxsE
— GoldenGunsGames (@GoldenGunsGames) June 23, 2016
Glitch videos are an entire sub-culture on YouTube. Many YouTubers bring in massive amounts of views showing gamers various glitches, cheats and exploits in video games. Cheats and glitches have existed since the dawn of software, and before YouTube there were these things called Game Genies and GameSharks, they allowed users to modify the hexadecimal codes in games to either activate or create cheats.
In today’s era, major publishers try to dissuade cheating culture by convincing newbies that cheating is wrong. Instead they sell you cheats via DLC, like Saints Row or the Shark Cards for GTA Online. Gamers are now being indoctrinated to believe that unfixed bugs and glitches in games being exploited are borderline illegal or the fault of the person who found them and not the developer who has failed to fix them.
Nevertheless, Take-Two and Rockstar shutting down YouTube channels hosting GTA V glitches is nothing new. A year ago they were doing the same thing, even managing to pull a channel down that had more than 440,000 subscribers called Sirnando. After that incident a lot of other YouTubers posting GTA V content refrained from showing in-game glitches or ways to cheat.
However, after YouTube tried to make the copyright procedures more in favor of creators to take advantage of Fair Use for creative, educational or parody videos, YouTubers began posting GTA V glitch videos again. And like clockwork, Take-Two Interactive went right back to hitting those channels with copyright strikes.
At this point it’s rather obvious that Rockstar does not want anyone to gain a monetary advantage in GTA Online… unless they pay real money for it through microtransactions.