The problem with making money off YouTube continues as another group of YouTubers, those that cover Call Of Duty games, are experiencing a decline in revenues. The problem here is that in YouTube’s “Advertiser-friendly content guidelines” videos that contain violence, whether real or fictional can be considered not to be appropriate for advertising. Thus, Call of Duty, which has a big online community of YouTubers, can covered by this guideline, and thus, may make it difficult for COD YouTubers to make money off their video content.

PrestigeIsKey, a popular COD YouTuber with over a million subscribers, put out this video explaining the problem:

YouTube please fix yourself and give your creators more transparency. Sometimes the people behind this platform forget that many of us rely on ad-dollars for our families. YouTube has leverage being the LARGEST traffic holder for content on the internet. Advertisers would be silly not to promote on this site in my eyes.

Kotaku reports that ever since the announcement of COD: WWII by Activision, things just turned worse for the community. Since the game has a World War II theme, Kotaku says that YouTubers may risk further demonetization if they talk about it.

A cause for this is the Wall Street Journal story about ads appearing on YouTube videos that promote hatred or racism or violence leading to major advertisers pulling out their ads from the biggest video sharing site in the world. YouTube put into place “brand safety controls” to allow advertisers to choose how their ads be displayed, allowing them to avoid videos that are considered to be “high risk”.

It has been suggested for the YouTubers affected to create more “advertiser friendly” content which may mean that they get off producing what they do best, producing content about developments in the Call of Duty video game, which is almost tantamount to telling them to commit mass suicide. Other YouTubers are looking for ways to monetize their content with ad just part of their revenue streams, like having subscribers support the via Patreon, merchandizing, or other creative ways just to support themselves and their families.

We have not heard stories from airsoft YouTubers if they are already experiencing a significant downturn in revenues. But it is something they have to watch out for, since airsoft is a grey area that YouTube or advertisers may determine that their content is not appropriate. If it happens it may also time to seek other wise to monetize their content other than advertising.