Atlus is back with some peculiarly limiting stipulations for folks looking to livestream Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden, the upcoming HD remasters of two pretty old RPGs slated to launch on January 19. You should be careful lest the developer-publisher comes after your content.
Read More: Please Don’t Spoil the New Persona Game, Begs Atlus
Persona 3 Portable (P3P) and Persona 4 Golden (P4G) are both well over a decade old, having launched in 2006 and 2008, respectively. According to a late-December announcement from Atlus, both games will get some new features in these releases for modern platforms, including high-resolution graphics, smoother controls, the option to choose your difficulty setting at the start (instead of waiting until the second calendar week), a quick-save mechanic, and (specifically for P4G), an album function to go over previous scenes. There are no alternate storylines, extra characters, or anything like that. If you’ve played these Persona games, then you know what to expect.
The age of these games is what makes the streaming restrictions so odd. As to Siliconera reports, Atlus wants content creators to abide by a set of specific rules when broadcasting the game to viewers, rules which it has published on its Japanese website, Persona Channel. Aside from putting up spoiler warnings in either the stream overlay or title when encountering parts that contain spoilers (such as P4G’s culprit’s dungeon), the company also demands you display the copyright “©Atlus ©Sega” watermarks when streaming or uploading videos of both P3P and P4G. On top of that, you can’t lock any piece of content behind a paywall. However, if you intend to monetize your videos, you have to go through YouTube’s partnership program. Your videos can’t focus solely on the music, you can’t show any cheats or mods, and you aren’t allowed to make content offensive towards any particular person. Oh, and if Atlus says the video has to come down, well, the video has to come down. End of discussion.
Kotaku reached out to Atlus for comment.
While the restrictions themselves aren’t terribly surprising, both Persona 3 and Persona 4 have been out for over ten years now. Sure, they’re making the jump to modern hardware, which will give these games a shiny new coat of paint. But, as Atlus has made clear, there’s nothing new buried in these games regarding plot or characters or anything of the sort. Folks have likely seen all the twists and turns these narratives have to offer by now. Hell, I just opened Twitch to see if anyone’s streaming Persona 3 and, sure enough, someone was at the time of writing. I won’t begrudge a person who wants to avoid spoilers, especially when they haven’t experienced the games for themselves. But at the same time, there’s something funny about treating games from over ten years ago as if they’re brand new and their twists and turns aren’t already widely known.
Read More: Once Again, Atlus Doesn’t Want You to Spoil the New Persona
This isn’t the first time Atlus has requested that folks not spoil Persona games, with the latest example being Persona 5’s release in 2017. Atlus threatened content creators with copyright strikes for posting spoiler-heavy videos, only to renege, loosen those restrictions, and apologize for going too hard in the paint.
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