Atlus U-Turn on Persona 5 Streaming

Atlus have gone under fire recently after their instructions to streamers came across as particularly threatening. The company were seen to be implying copyright strikes on streamers for spoilers of their flagship RPG Persona 5.

Turns out though, that viewers of game streaming are well aware that spoilers may come with watching a stream but they’re OK with it. Atlus were bombarded with tweets and emails from angry fans and streamers, requesting that the policy was reconsidered. In a statement on their website, the publisher has now changed its tune somewhat.

“When Persona 5 launched, we put out a set of video/streaming guidelines that we hoped would limit online spoilers for fans who have yet to play the game.

To our surprise, we then saw numerous reactive news articles go up, opinion videos post, and received many emails asking us to please change our Persona 5 streaming/video policy. We recognize that our fans are the reason why the game is the major worldwide success it is, and we continue to want them to be able to enjoy the game without fear of being spoiled. However, we also heard your issues with the guidelines and have decided to revise them. Because we want to give players the most access to the game while respecting the original goal, we’re now asking players to refrain from streaming or posting video past the end of the in-game date of 11/19—when the main story gears up for the final act.

We also want to apologize to those of you who saw the previous guidelines blog post as threatening. We want to be transparent about what we do, and the reason we released the guidelines was to give streamers the right information up front. It was never our intention to threaten people with copyright strikes, but we clearly chose the wrong tone for how to communicate this.

Lastly, we want to thank our fans around the world for supporting Persona 5 and ATLUS. The game is a global success because of your passion for the series, and we’re happy that so many of you are enjoying it.”

The change in tone is testament to the influence that fans can have in the modern gaming world, but also shows that Atlus aren’t afraid to admit when they’ve made a mistake. With the new policy, streamers can relax, safe in the knowledge that they don’t have to worry about copyright strikes from Atlus.