No Man's Sky dev apologises for erroneous YouTube takedowns
UPDATE: Wrongly flagged fan's account restored in time for 24-hour charity stream.
UPDATE 08/08/2016 9.47pm: Steven Thomas' wrongly flagged YouTube account will be back up and running in time for his 24-hour livestream for charity.
"I just woke up and talking with a rep right now. I might be able to get the other video cleared and if so I can livestream again," Thomas said on Twitter.
"I can livestream again via youtube tonight!" he added. "THANK YOU!!!"
Thomas' previous videos that were removed are back up, and the video where he pleads with Sony to get this sorted has been removed - something he said he would do once this got fixed.
ORIGINAL STORY 08/08/2016 5.44pm: No Man's Sky's launch has been a bit of an odd one in that the game was leaked early and loads of footage was easily accessible to anyone who knew where to look for it. Naturally, the game's publisher, Sony Computer Entertainment, wasn't happy about this and went about issuing copyright strikes to remove videos showing unauthorised content. The problem was that it also issued strikes against videos that only discussed the game, even if they didn't show any leaked footage or reveal any information attained from the unofficial release.
The problem became so widespread that No Man's Sky developer Hello Games publicly apologised for this error and said it's working with Sony on fixing this.
"To anyone who is having their old NMS vids taken down accidentally, we're working on it. Discussing with Sony now," Hello Games tweeted. "Really sorry @xXxCobra @StevenKThomas - we'll get this sorted."
That second person mentioned, Steven Thomas (No Man's Sky Gamer on YouTube), was especially crestfallen as he had been promoting a 24-hour livestream tonight as part of a charity fundraiser for the Make-A-Wish foundation, a non-profit organisation offering support to children with life-threatening illnesses.
"I don't understand why Sony PlayStation would do this to my channel of all channels when I go on Twitch and I get people messaging me on Twitter and I see all these other people who have illegal copies of the game and uploading footage and getting thousands - thousands! - of subscribers, and tens of thousands of views, and nothing is being done about them," Thomas lamented in a tearful video pleading for the publisher to amend its mistake pronto.
"I've been promoting your game for months. I'm so looking forward to this! And now I can't raise money on YouTube over the course of the livestream for the Make-A-Wish Foundation because I can't livestream via YouTube now that I have this strike. And it's wrong!"
For its part, Sony has admitted its mistake in some instances. While Thomas is still anxiously awaiting a response, YouTube channel The Know has received an apology from Sony, who revoked the copyright strike.
The Know's video discussed the No Man's Sky leak, but didn't show any footage from it, nor did it discuss any information revealed within it. In fact, the hosts claimed that they never even watched the leaked footage as they didn't want to spoil it for themselves. All they did was tell people where they could find it (on Pornhub, of all places).
"SCEA has released the copyright claim against our original news update, acknowledged it was a mistake, and apologised!" The Know said in its YouTube notes. "Being angry over internet injustice has worked wonders once again!"