The competitive nature and high-skilled play make the fighting game genre a good fit for streaming. And publisher Arc System Works agrees until you start streaming campaigns. In a statement today on their website, Arc System Works laid out the streaming guidelines for their upcoming fighting game, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle. Players will be able to stream as many competitive matches as they can play, but there are much stricter limitations around the game’s story mode.
The guidelines are pretty clear: Arc System Works does want players to stream the Episode Mode, which is BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle‘s campaign. But “if you have to,” you can stream “very short clips of Episode Mode content up to Chapter 2,” which sounds like you can really only stream the game’s opening chapter. Arc System Works is threatening players with content ID claims and channel strikes for those willing tempt fate and stream past their mentioned boundaries. These rules, whatever you think of them, are “are non-negotiable with the powers that be.”
These rules, as the website states, are not new for Arc System Works’ games. They published the Japanese version of Skullgirls and have issued content claims on the game, despite its other worldwide publishers being fairly open with streaming. While Arc System Works developed Dragon Ball FighterZ, they did not publish it, hence the game not having the same restrictive guidelines.
While letting you stream your “online shenanigans, dance parties, and the like” is a decent open gesture, this ongoing crackdown against streaming from Japanese companies looks archaic when compared to the attitudes of most American and European publishers. Atlus tried to do the same thing last year with Persona 5 and Nintendo has always had a tenuous relationship with the internet in general, especially streaming. Atlus eventually relaxed some of the rules for Persona 5, but never quite let players stream what they wanted.
Atlus’ involvement with Cross Tag Battle could be the reason (or one of them) that the campaign can’t be streamed. Seven characters from Persona 4 Arena are in the game and, thus, Atlus could have pushed Arc System Works into implementing a more stringent set of rules. But, no matter the reason, it’s an oddly draconian method to keep people from viewing spoilers.
