Let’s Play streams and videos are one of the biggest mediums within the games industry, allowing people to watch others play a game and decide on whether to buy it for themselves or not. Some watch because they want to be entertained, which is okay too. In the case of Numinous Games and its game That Dragon ,Cancer, this is allegedly a problem.
Since That Dragon Cancer launched in January there have been approximately 12,000 copies sold, with the studio stating it is yet to see any of the money from sales. That means the studio can’t work on porting the game to other platforms, or new projects. A lot of the issue allegedly stems from Let’s Plays where the host has posted the entirety of the game too watch, which in turn means people won’t buy That Dragon, Cancer itself.
Ryan of Numinous Games wrote on the studio’s blog saying:
However, for a short, relatively linear experience like ours, for millions of viewers, Let’s Play recordings of our content satisfy their interest and they never go on to interact with the game in the personal way that we intended for it to be experienced.  If you compare the millions of views of the entirety of our game on YouTube to our sales as estimated on SteamSpy, you can hopefully see the disparity.
We have seen many people post our entire game on YouTube with little to no commentary. We’ve seen people decompile our game and post our soundtrack on YouTube. We’ve also seen many, many Let’s Players post entire playthroughs of our game, posting links to all of their own social channels and all of their own merchandising and leaving out a link to our site.
Let’s Plays have been seen as a good thing for the industry in general, they can be. Many Let’s Players show games others may never had heard of before, which in turn can generate sales. From the example provided by Numinous Games that does depend on the type of game being shown. After all That Dragon, Cancer isn’t a long title and is heavily story focused over the action. There are no alternate paths here, so once someone has viewed a LP of the game then they don’t need to play it.
Of course this is just the tip of a very large iceberg, and it may always be the case that some games gain from Let’s Plays while others suffer.
Source: Numinous Games
Tuffcub
1) They shouldn’t have sent out loads of review copies to YouTubers then.
2) There is no proof Let’s Plays dented their sales anyway
3) Maybe not everyone thinks playing a game about someone dying from cancer sounds like a fun thing to do. Like me. Nice idea, but no, I don’t want to play that.
Starman
Agreed, especially point #3. They’re looking for a scapegoat but let’s plays isn’t it.
Sitorimon
Absolute tosh. I run a YouTube channel that has moderate success and aside from the “your crap”, “im better than you” and “this is my childhood” comments (or Parappa being Gay?!) the next biggest comment is “thanks for the review/insight – I’m going to pick this up”
Completely understand that a linear story game may not really get the same kind of traction from video reviews, lets plays, or as I do – snapshot Quick Looks, but I would imagine that more people are more aware the game exists because of the Lets Plays than it would have beforehand and it’s highly likely those sales would never have have happened in the first place if they didn’t know the game existed.
Tuffcub
Also Firewatch is totally linear and 5 hrs long, had loads of Lets Plays and yet that sold 1/2 a million. I think blaming YouTubers is very unfair here.
hazelam
i know i’ve bought more than a few games just from seeing them in a lets play.
even linear games.
TSBonyman
It’s a shame it hasn’t sold well but I think the subject matter was always going to be a difficult sell. I had heard of the game and as much as i was moved by the story behind it’s creation, it sounded a bit depressing and i didn’t feel compelled to check it out, even in a Let’s Play.
But i bet with the word “cancer” in the title it may have been viewed by many folks who weren’t even gamers, possibly many folks whose lives have been affected by cancer may have been interested in just watching it as a “dealing with cancer” story.
The Lone Steven
I can understand why they feel like it is damaging sales and well, i would be a bit pissed if all of my hard work was shown for free and i recieved nothing but it’s kinda their own fault for issuing review copies. The nature of the game is well, not a nice subject and some may be put off by that topic.
Let’s Plays are a powerful tool and many have found games via their favourite youtubers. That said, blaming let’s plays is a tatic often used by erm…. crappy developers and well, some like to blame a certain Jim Sterling for their sales being crap because he did a let’s play of their crap. If the game is crap, no amount of let’s plays will save it and blaming it on youtube is well, a quick way to damage your reptuation.
That said, Youtube managed to not dick over the let players by muting the videos because of content ID bs?
Sitorimon
It makes great sense now – today their video of the making of the film was released for £3.99 on steam. I am actually really interested but this story is very nicely timed…