Persona 5 players can now stream the game for a bit longer without fear of Atlus’ retribution. The publisher revised its original video guidelines for the game, laying them out in a blog post that apologized to anyone who felt “threatened” by the previous rules.
“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,” said Atlus. “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.”
That’s a whopping four months later than the original in-game end date of mid-July. Atlus will presumably send out copyright strikes to anyone who shows off what happens beyond November in Persona 5, just as it threatened to do so with the original guidelines.
At the same time, the publisher was wary of coming off as too heavy-handed with these guidelines. The post goes on to offer an olive branch to fans who were put off by Persona 5’s streaming rules in the first place.
“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,” the publisher explained. “It was never our intention to threaten people with copyright strikes, but we clearly chose the wrong tone for how to communicate this.”
Persona 5 players have devised crafty ways of circumventing these streaming guidelines since it came out in Japan, and they will likely continue to do so. The critically acclaimed role-playing game has been out since April 4 in the West, but launched in Japan last fall.
It’s important to note that the PlayStation 4 Share feature still won’t work with Persona 5, despite Atlus lightening up with its guidelines. We’ll have to keep resorting to taking pictures of the game with our phones instead.