Quoted By:
Japan law doesn't have the concept of fair use, so copyright is very strict, and companies can be very protective of their IP. If you are Japanese and make a movie, having even a bottle of Cola without permission, can get you a lawsuit, because a Cola bottle is copyrighted by Coca-Cola, so unless they sponsor you, you need to pay them a license fee. That's why you see all those funny brands in Anime like McRonald, and GogaGola, or Zphone.
Is the same with games. Japanese video game companies, consider that when they sell you a game, they sell you a license to play it. To them, someone streaming a video game is equivalent to you buying the DVD of a movie, and then streaming it online to thousands if not millions of people. And not only that you stream the game, but you also make money out of it... out of their product. So they consider that you should pay a fee for that. Permissions for playing games are just simple OK's through emails, often they also involve paying the game publishers a fee, which can be a lump sum or a percentage of the revenue from those streams. And those companies can react in different ways, depending on the company. For example, Hololive can play new Pokemon games, only for 30-40 days after launch, while Nijisanji has permission to play any time they want. At the same time, Niji didn't touch Palworld, due to their relationship with the Pokemon publishers.
Indies have fewer restrictions because those companies can't really bother going after them - if you go to a lawsuit, you could end up having thousands of lawsuits with thousands of indies, and the return could be lower than the costs - instead of doing that, companies like Nintendo or Sega, tried to go after the streaming service - like they did with Twitch for example. They tried to force Twitch to remove streams and streamers that streamed their games, and while Twitch complied for a while, in the end Twitch realized that they are losing money doing that, and stopped. Those companies also realized how complicated and risky an international lawsuit with Twitch or Google would be, so they stopped trying. But Cover, and Anycolor, are Japanese companies. So Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, and etc. have all they need to go after them.
Western companies are more liberal, but only by a bit. Remember when Disney forced the 2 parents to remove their custom-made Spiderman gravestone, they made for the grave of their son who died of cancer, because it was violating Disney's IP?
Rockstar also gave Hololive permission to play GTA5, as long as the stream is not monetized.
The only thing that we in the West have, and Japan doesn't, is laws that protect us from those corporations going crazy about their property.
