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YouTube issues strike against inactive stream event

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I attempted to access my YouTube account today as I was exporting a video from Twitch regarding a crash issue in XCOM 2.  When I accessed the site, I was notified of a strike against my account.  I was expecting it to be related to a video of a spammer/greifer in one of the games I have Wall of Shame lists on, however no, it was apparently directed at an inactive stream.  To find this out, I had to dig around my account to find that my streaming rights had been revoked:

As far as I know, there hasn't been any streaming activity to my YouTube account since the last strike on 7/11/2016, where the strike was overturned after an appeal was filed & was the final straw that made me decide I wasn't ever going to stream to YouTube again.  I can only assume it was directed at the description of the previous broadcast as it was never changed after the last strike was issued; that description was as follows:

NOTICE:
Streaming is currently being done here rather than Twitch while I wait for a pending appeal to process on misdetected media in the video that caused "audio vandalism" (auto-muting) to happen. Whether streaming of this game continues to be streamed here over being done on Twitch will depend on whether those mutes continue to happen on Twitch & if I start running into the same problem here. Archived broadcasts of this game will not be made public & will be deleted after they are aired; taking highlights from the archived stream before it's deleted is possible if there is something I want to save.

NOW PLAYING:
Dragon Ball XenoVerse (PS3)

FURTHER INFORMATION:
- Official: http://www.dragonballxenoverse.com
- PSN: https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-us/games/dragon-ball-xenoverse/cid=UP0700-NPUB31619_00-DRAGONBALLXV0000
- GameSpot: http://www.gamespot.com/dragon-ball-xenoverse
- Giantbomb: http://www.giantbomb.com/dragon-ball-xenoverse/3030-46319
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_XenoVerse

CHARACTER PLANNING:
http://www.tinyurl.com/WG-DBXc
This is a spreadsheet I've provided to my friends who I play the game with, which can also be used as a form of wishlist in the game. Character planning will change as I progress through the game & more equipment, skills & items become available.

PERSONAL REVIEW ON PS3 VERSION OF DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE:
http://www.wondergamer.net/reviews/dragon_ball_xenoverse.htm
(counter doubles as link on Bandai/Namco forums about spammers in the game)

It is very likely that this description was the reason for it getting flagged last time, however despite there being no activity on it, the stream was once again flagged, simply because I did not clear it.

The other possibility was that I recently had the battery replaced in a used Samsung Galaxy S6, where I noticed after it got it back from Bad Apple located in Sugar House that they were apparently going through my phone (whether this was to test that it was working or simply to steal information/accounts is still to be determined).  If it turned out that they got my streaming key for my channel from my phone when they were replacing the battery, it is very likely that if any streaming was being done that caused the strike, it would have been these individuals that did it.  Another thing that makes this very probable is that I called them the day after I went in to have the battery replaced, assuming that they may not have changed the battery at all given it wasn't really getting an increase in battery life & this was the same day that the strike was issued.  As far as I can see, there are not deleted videos with strikes on them in my Video Manager, so I'm pretty certain only the unchanged description from the last stream 2 and a half months ago was the reason for the strike.

Until I am able to see what was in that video (if one actually exists), I won't be able to determine the actual reason for the strike as YouTube has not given any details regarding it as of yet, other than simply linking to the Copyright issues with live streams and Hangouts On Air page when I click on the Learn more link under the disabled option on my Status and features page.

When checking the email regarding the violation, it would imply that perhaps the flags are at fault here:

As stated in the Discussion tab from the last strike, this would be a matter of not inaccurate tags, but more those who are reporting it (if valid) do not understand the tags; further details regarding this can be found on the review written about the last strike located here.

Were this only to effect streaming, this wouldn't really matter given the fact that I don't intend on streaming to YouTube ever again, however regardless of not streaming to YouTube, the remaining description still is target of strikes even after the original incident that had the strike reversed.  It does state that the strike will eventually expire, however does that mean the strike would completely be cleared or would the strike remain on the account indefinitely for a reason outside of what's the truth?  What's more of a problem is the fact that I can't clear what is already in the streaming description field because of the strike, so does that mean they can continue to file strikes on the same reason they filed this strike even though the description no longer has relevance if there is no intention of using the streaming feature on YouTube ever again.

At the time I made the decision that YouTube streaming was no longer worth the time, effort or abuse I got out of it, I already decided that game streaming would no longer be a part of my YouTube channel except in the case where it was getting pointed out via notification of my Twitch streaming (not on YouTube, but this is a part of Twitch/YouTube API), except private, non-profit activist streams might have still been used in the future.  Earlier this month, I actually opened a Dailymotion account, intending on moving my streaming from Twitch to them, however I ended up closing my account shortly after it's creation due to lack of patience waiting for a response on my email requesting further explanation regarding various points in their ToS agreement (getting the response after the account was closed).  I closed the account because the rules looked very similar to YouTube's, however after I got the response, it seems it would have been less of a hassle that continuing to use Twitch/YouTube.

As I stated before in the last review regarding this matter, I need a YouTube account to be able to share videos on Steam, however not having to deal with YouTube's ignorance would be an acceptable sacrifice to not sharing videos on Steam (I can share them through other sites regardless & simply share a single link to that site in my Steam profile).  Plus Dailymotion has a good reputation as far as monitizing through external links & embedded players, so at this point, it seems that sharing my media through Dailymotion would be preferable on a number of points over Twitch & YouTube.  At this point we will see how YouTube handles the appeal & new review published in response to their ignorance & take it from there (most videos are already backed up from YouTube, I should have no problem moving them to other community media sites).

UPDATE:  As I was linking over the XCOM 2 video to my Steam account, I noticed that there was indeed a video that had been deleted by YouTube, however I'm still not sure what was in it as it wasn't my doing:

At this point I have to expect my account was compromised & seeing as I was sure I had 2-step authentication on, I'm pretty certain it must've been Bad Apple that did it, seeing as when I checked my account, that additional security had been turned off on both of my Google accounts.

At this point it looks like I may need to get the police involved & I was intending on going back there & watching them as they replaced the battery because I not only wanted to make sure they replaced the battery (as there was very little improvement with the last replacement), but also to make sure they weren't going through my phone as they were doing when I walked back into the store to get it.

UPDATE:  As I was going over the security on my Google account, it appears that 2-step verifications was indeed disabled on both my Google accounts.  I have changed the password on both Google accounts & re-enabled 2-step login verifications.  The only way I can see that they would have been disabled would have been while Bad Apple was working on it & they were apparently toying with it while I was away at another store waiting for them to finish.  Not only does it appear they didn't change the battery, they may have also compromised my account & I expect this is what caused the strike on my YouTube account, however I won't know that if I can't see what was in the video that got deleted & it appears I may need to get the police involved, not only in the case against Bad Apple, but also in the case of YouTube.

UPDATE:  I changed the information on my YouTube stream page to wipe anything there that YouTube may have been targeting for said strike (seems the reason I thought I couldn't do it before was because I didn't leave anything in the title), noticed something odd when I accessed my YouTube videos from my Steam account again:

The Nothing here video is what I changed the title of the stream to & cleared the description if it.  From the looks of it, YouTube is now showing the ability to share live streams on Steam in addition to standard videos (unless this is just a bug), so I don't believe the account was compromised at this point, other than the fact that 2-step verifications were disabled from my Google accounts.  At this point the appeal is still pending & I haven't received a response regarding the appeal, so the future of my channel (and whether I move that content to another community media site) will be dependant on the decision as to whether this strike is reversed/removed or not.  If I had my decision, I would disable broadcasting on the channel to prevent further abuse, seeing as I no longer intend on using it (except in rare cases for certain events of private, non-profit activist streams linked off of other sites, but definitely not for gameplay streams anymore).

UPDATE: As I was going through my YouTube videos, marking them an unlisted (which have been released on a new Blogspot listing) as I decided that a public listing of videos on YouTube was no longer worth the trouble I was getting from those stalking the channel & causing problems on it (seeing as this strike proved that YouTube had no intentions in taking the appeal seriously, given I expect they would have found no violation was present if they actually bothered to go over it), I noticed there appeared to be a video on the 3rd page of my uploaded videos in the Video Manager that had that title on it that would appear to be stuck processing, yet while it did have the date of 9/23/2016, the placement of the video in the Video Manager would have put it in the timeframe that it was uploaded on February 15-16 of 2016, which I know wouldn't be accurate seeing as I was streaming gameplay to Twitch at that time while I was streaming the activist movement against indoor smoking/drugs at the South 67 Condos to YouTube (both at the same time on different channels).  Seems like a bug, however YouTube still hasn't sorted it out & it's been nearly a week, so I'm done trying to be a normal user on YouTube that shares videos publicly & am going to take the private listing route to hopefully avoid further attacks on my channel in the future (provided YouTube doesn't have a fit that I did this & terminate the account, however that will just warrant another review against them & I move the backups of those videos to another site).

UPDATE:  Still no response from YouTube on the appeal as of 10/2/2016 & after much deliberation, it's been determined that what is happening is Bandai/Namco is retaliating to the negative review against Dragon Ball XenoVerse by abusing copyright complaints against my channel much like Wild Game Studios did against Total Biscuit (a.k.a. Cynical Brit) on his negative review of Day One: Garry's Incident.  At this point I have to believe YouTube has no intentions in reversing the strike & likely doesn't even intend on going over the appeal at all as I expect I would have at least gotten an email of rejected appeal if they had (although if they've been following the discussion on my channel before it ended up getting hidden, they are probably already aware that I have a review up regarding this situation & don't want to give me further material to add to it, however it's very possible the review is why they are ignoring the appeal).

Not only have I updated this review on the strike issued on an inactive YouTube stream page, I've also updated the review on the game disclosing information about the publishers retaliation to negative reviews of their games & intend on writing a review against the publishers themselves as well.  It is very possible I may end up making a complaint against not only YouTube, but also Namco/Bandai to the Better Business Bureau & possibly Consumer Protection as well.

In any case I may not need to deal with YouTube much longer anyways.  Twitch has FINALLY added the option to upload videos to their site, so it may be time to migrate all my videos to Twitch & I won't even need to bother with the blog anymore (only leaving the YouTube channel open for sharing unlisted videos on Steam & personal non-public activity, nothing else).

UPDATE:  A BBB complaint against Google (being the owner of YouTube) was filed on 10/5/2016, at this point I'll need to see if the BBB will accept pursuing the complaint as it's not requesting a monetary value.  If anything this should get further detail to Google about the strike so they can reconsider whether the strike needs to be there, even if they choose not to accept the terms.  I will publish another update once I have gotten contact back from the BBB.  Should the account be closed in response to it, I'll be working on uploading all backed up videos to Twitch, seeing as they now allow uploading to their site rather than just archived streams; non-gaming videos will be re-uploaded elsewhere.

UPDATE:  The complaint was reviewed & accepted by the BBB, at this point it's being sent to Google, which I assume will then be sent to YouTube if Google takes it seriously.  The following details was given in the complaint:

On 9/23/2016, I had an inactive stream on my YouTube channel (wondergamerx) get issued a strike for a STILL unknown reason (I can only assume it had something to do with the description, as only publishers can file copyright complaints & it's expected there was a complaint against the inactive page from Bandai/Namco due to the link in the description linking to a negative review about Dragon Ball XenoVerse). The email I received stated something about a deleted video, which would be inaccurate as no stream was running at the time; I did find something in my Video Manager that had that title (stuck at processing) & the date the strike was issued, however the placement of the video put it at around Feb. 15-16, which I know isn't accurate as I was streaming that game to Twitch at the time & an anti-indoor drug use, activist stream on YouTube (at the same time), so this seems to be a bug if anything.

I have already filed an appeal with YouTube on the strike, yet the appeal may have invalid information seeing as it was expected at the time my account was compromised (as two-step login verifications were disabled on both of my Google accounts after I had a battery replaced on my phone at Bad Apple) & appears to be getting ignored; the appeal was filed on the 25th after acknowledging the strike (a step that is forced on you before they'll allow you to access your account again) when I was attempting to verify an exported video from Twitch, the last activity on YouTube being on Sept. 18 (not including viewing & editing of playlists).

My request to YouTube is not monetary, but that they reverse the strike on my account due to an invalid reason; as for the disabling of the stream page due to the strike, that can stay disabled as I expect it's being used for easy abuse of the report function (either by Bandai/Namco in retaliation to the negative review of their game or by various griefers stalking my channel that have been publicly named in videos that have been uploaded pointing out their griefing activity). It was already determined after the incident on 7/11/2016 that I wouldn't be streaming to YouTube ever again, yet somehow they still found a way to pin a strike on that page even when it was inactive (I can only assume due to the unchanged description from the last violation, which was reversed after being appealed).

Due to NUMEROUS attacks on my channel in the past, I first forced moderation of comments & disabled viewing of ratings on videos. After the situation on 7/11/2016, it was decided I wouldn't be streaming to YouTube anymore (at least not publicly & not of gameplay). After this last situation, I decided that public listing of videos on my channel was no longer worth the trouble I was getting over it, so all videos were changed to unlisted & the listing of those videos are currently only available on a Blogspot blog available only on request (other than other sites where links to my videos have been shared).

It is very likely that the BBB won't get a response on this matter seeing as it has to be run through Google rather than YouTube directly, however that just means they're going to go back down to an F- rating (apparently this happened once before according to complaint logs; they were at D+ when I checked a few days ago, now they're at C-).  It is possible that YouTube may decide to retaliate to the complaint by terminating the YouTube account (which is just going to warrant another review on their service & my moving my videos to another site).  The last possibility is they terminate the Google+ account associated with the YouTube account, which would be a worst case scenario & I intend on taking them to court over it if they take that route.

UPDATE: Looking into this issue a bit further, I decided to check the status on the streaming options on my account, I found the following:

So the cause of this strike was definitely caused by Bandai/Namco for only they can file a copyright claim against videos of that game.  At this point the following actions have been taken:

UPDATE:  On 10/14/2016, I received a response via email from Google (sent 10/11/2016) stating that I needed to refile the complaint against them using the email address registered to my Google account to verify ownership of the account.  I honestly think this was a stalling technique, but we'll see if refiling it does any good...  The complaint was refiled on 10/15/216 with the following details:

On 9/23/2016, I had an inactive stream on my YouTube channel (youtube.com/c/wondergamerx) get issued a strike for what appears to have been a copyright infringement complaint from Bandai/Namco. In the beginning the reason was unknown, but it became obvious who was responsible for causing the strike when I noticed the Live Streaming Events page had a copyright strike on it on that date with the title of that game name, despite the fact that there was no active stream at the time the strike was issued. It is believed that Bandai/Namco filed the complaint on the stream solely due to a link in the description that linked to a mostly negative review of Dragon Ball XenoVerse (unchanged from when I did attempt to stream the game on 7/11/2016 & got hit with a violation, prematurely ending the stream & pretty well locking down my channel until the violation got reversed the next day after an appeal was filed).

I have already filed an appeal with YouTube on this strike, yet the appeal had invalid information seeing as it was expected at the time my account was compromised (as two-step login verifications were disabled on both of my Google accounts after I had a battery replaced on my phone at Bad Apple) & appears to be getting ignored; the appeal was filed on the 25th after acknowledging the strike (a step that is forced on you before they'll allow you to access your account again) when I was attempting to verify an exported video from Twitch, the last activity on YouTube being on Sept. 18 (not including viewing & editing of playlists).

My request to YouTube is not monetary, but that they reverse the strike on my account due to an invalid reason; as for the disabling of the stream page due to the strike, that can stay disabled as I expect it's being used for easy abuse of the report. It was already determined after the incident on 7/11/2016 that I wouldn't be streaming to YouTube ever again, yet somehow they still found a way to pin a strike on that page even when it was inactive.

Due to NUMEROUS attacks on my channel in the past, I first forced moderation of comments & disabled viewing of ratings on videos. After the situation on 7/11/2016, it was decided I wouldn't be streaming to YouTube anymore (at least not publicly & not of gameplay). After this last situation, I decided that public listing of videos on my channel was no longer worth the trouble I was getting over it, so all videos were changed to unlisted & the listing of those videos were relisted in a private Blogspot blog available only to friends on request (other than other sites where links to my videos have been shared). A BBB complaint was filed on 10/5/2016 under case #[censored]. While waiting for a response & looking further into what caused it to happen, it was determined that the attacks on the channel was coming from Bandai/Namco targeting a link to a mostly negative review on Dragon Ball XenoVerse in the description of the Stream as only the publishers of the game can file copyright claims; additional information was supplied on 10/9/2016 after realizing the source of the strike. At that point I set public listing of videos that were previously public back to public, with the exception of any videos of Dragon Ball XenoVerse (those stayed as unlisted on YouTube & are only listed on other sites). On 7/14/2016, I received a response to the previous BBB complaint stating I needed to recreate the complaint using the email address that the YouTube account was registered under to verify ownership, which led to this complaint with updated information.

UPDATE:  It appears that the BBB is not accepting the secondary complaint, so Google has effectively utilized a loophole to avoid having to do anything on the previous claim.  Perhaps it is time to contact Consumer Protection or call Google directly.

UPDATE:  Seeing as it became apparent the secondary BBB complaint was not going to be accepted, I decided to attempt to submit a review about the two different YouTube incidents to the BBB on 10/17/2016.  However on email confirmation of the review, it stated that if you had filed a BBB complaint against the company, the review would not be published, so for the sake of not having the time wasted writing that review, I am going to publish the review myself that was submitted to the BBB (that likely won't be published on their site):

Google itself isn't that bad of a company, but YouTube uses very aggressive penalties based on complaints against your videos/streams that may or may not be true; those complaints either come from abusive users who are manipulating the report function to further their own agenda or from companies that could very well also be abusing the report function to censor bad reviews (as it appears was accurate in my case with Bandai/Namco, this has been proven in the case of TotalBuscuit & Jim Sterling). This causes those that are victims of false reports to first be forced to acknowledge those strikes/violations (even if not true), then use a very limited appeal system hoping for some justice on the abuse.

I got my first violation on 7/11/2016, in response to a complaint from Bandai/Namco directed at a stream of Dragon Ball XenoVerse. At the time the reason was unknown, but it became obvious after the strike on 9/23/2016 that those strikes & violations were coming from Bandai/Namco in retaliation to a mostly negative review on the game, where a link to that review was in the description of the review. This caused the stream to end prematurely & the account to get locked up for the most part with very limited functionality remaining (at the time, I made an announcement that no new videos was going to be uploaded to the channel for 6 months, when the false violation expired. The first violation got reversed after appeal on 7/12/2016.

The second incident happened on 9/23/2016, where a strike was issued once again on the stream page (set to expire 3 months after it was issued), however this time there was no active stream (no video) & appeared to have only been targeted due to the link to the review (or possibly the thumbnail, which was a Dragon Ball XenoVerse wallpaper), which was unchanged from the violation on 7/11/2016. Additionally, streaming was disabled on the account, but this didn't matter much as it was already determined I wouldn't be streaming gameplay to YouTube anymore after the incident on 7/11/2016 (there was plans for private, non-profit, activist streams, however nothing had been streamed to my YouTube account since that incident). I didn't find out about the strike until the 24th, when I was attempting to verify an XCOM 2 video I had exported from Twitch. The email I got claimed a video had been deleted, however there was no video I could find except what appeared to be a bug (video stuck at processing with the same title & thumbnail as the stream used to have before it was disabled due to this strike) which placed the video in the Video Manager around the date of Feb. 15-16, 2016, which I know isn't accurate as I was streaming a non-profit movement against indoor smoking/drug use in the South 67 Condos to YouTube at the same time I was broadcasting that game to Twitch. An appeal was filed on the 25th, however it appears this appeal ended up getting flat-out ignored.

On 10/5/2016, a BBB complaint was filed against Google to try & get something done about the ignored appeal (even if it were denied, I would expect I would have received an email stated that it were denied, which never happened). Again, the reason was unknown in the beginning, however additional information was later provided on 10/9/2016 when it became apparent what caused it, including a couple screenshots of supporting information such as the email about deleted video & strike against account, as well as a screenshot of the Live Stream Events page, which showed a "video" (not entirely accurate as there was no stream at the time the strike was filed, not even sure how it ever got classified as a "video") flagged for copyright violation.

On 10/11/2016, Google replied to the BBB complaint that they needed me to re-file the complaint under the email that was registered to the YouTube account (being filed under a Hotmail account rather than the associated Yahoo account), however I didn't get that response until the 14th. A follow-up BBB complaint was filed the same day, however it appears that complaint was never accepted, so Google effectively used a loophole on the fact that it was not filed under the email account that was registered to the YouTube account to avoid having to do anything about it.

I have been publicly logging these penalties on community media sites (not only YouTube, but also Twitch) on my personal site per incident since 4/25/2015, however it is unlikely those reviews will ever be seen on a site with very little legitimate users (mostly hackers, DDoS attacks & web archivers), so I decided it was time to get a review up on the BBB.

This is more a review of YouTube than Google. Splitting the ratings of recommendation, I would give them both a 7 due to functionality, popularity & also taking into account problems/annoyances from both sites, however were I to recommend YouTube, I would be sure to warn people of the strict penalties that come from YouTube management & abusive users.

I am planning on writing one of these reviews on Bandai/Namco also, which should be accepted seeing as I haven't filed a BBB complaint against them yet, however I'm already expecting they are going to dispute the review, so I'll be sure to publish that review to the review of the company on this site also.  I also intend on filing a Consumer Protection complaint against Bandai/Namco for hostility towards customers (not that I'm one of their customers anymore, but that's because of their actions).

UPDATE:  As expected, the review submitted to the BBB (seen above) was rejected due to a complaint being filed against Google according to this reply received the morning of 10/18/2016:

My response to this email was as follows, however I don't know if that box is being actively monitored, so they may not even see it:

The complaint was filed, however Google utilized a loophole by stating they couldn't do anything as the complaint was sent under an email that did not match the email account registered to the YouTube account in question.  They stated I needed to re-file the complaint under the correct email address, which I did, but I never got a confirmation email about the new complaint to [censored] when it was submitted.  It was my assumption that the follow-up complaint was rejected due to it being on the same issue as the previous complaint.  Because I couldn't file another complaint on the request of Google, I decided to try a review.  In any case I duplicated that review on my personal site as I noticed the note about submitted BBB reviews won't be accepted if a complaint was already filed after it was already submitted (already expecting it would be rejected, I didn't want the time spent in writing it to be wasted), but seeing as Google manipulated that loophole to dismiss the previous complaint, seems they have successfully locked me out of receiving help on this matter because they wouldn't do anything on the previous complaint (due to the email address used to file the complaint not being in their system).  For reference, the previous complaint was case #[censored].

UPDATE:  On 10/21/2016, I received a response from the BBB stating that the complaint was still open, but they didn't specifically state which complaint it was that was still open.  Word for word, their response was:

The complaint is still in process. 
The details will be posted once it is closed therefore, the review was rejected.

In response to this, I decided to go back to the original complaint filed on the 25th & supply the following details:

The BBB is stating that this complaint is still open & I expect this is why I can't file a new complaint or a company review on the BBB, so for the time being, I am going to supply the information for my YouTube account. The account is registered under the email address of [censored] (this is also the username of the Google account linked to the YouTube account). The channel is located at http://www.youtube.com/c/wondergamerx . The name on the account & visible on the channel is the same as on the complaint, [censored].

At this point I know the reason why the strike happened, as well as the violation on 7/11/2016 (only the strike issued on 9/23/2016 remains unresolved, however). This is retaliation from Bandai/Namco on my (mostly negative) review of Dragon Ball XenoVerse (on my personal site). While I didn't find anything to back up this claim on the internet when I did a Google search, I have had others claim the same type of retaliation that I have received when it comes to negative reviews, one in particular caught in a gameplay video of Evolve discussed during the match (not uploaded to YouTube as I already knew Bandai/Namco would retaliate against it, but it is Highlighted off my Twitch channel & I have a full-quality backup on my computer). It's been determined that the target of those attacks were either due to the link to my review of the game in the description of the stream page or the fact that a Dragon Ball XenoVerse wallpaper was being used as the thumbnail of the stream (regardless of the fact that there was no active stream at the time the strike was issued, despite the fact that the email I received from YouTube said a video was deleted, which couldn't have been accurate if nothing was being streamed to it at the time the strike was issued).

UPDATE:  I received an email from the BBB on 11/14/2016 stating that case #515049 against Google (owners of YouTube) was being closed as "Answered - the business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer remains dissatisfied."  The full details of this email were:

Complaint ID#: 515049
Business Name: Google, Inc.

BBB received a rebuttal response from the business regarding the additional information you provided, which is enclosed or has been forwarded to you by the business. Details of the complaint (including the business' response) can be accessed at the following website address:  [censored].

At this time, the business has decided to stand by its original decision, and the complaint has been closed in BBB files. Your complaint will appear in the company's BBB Business Review as: "Answered - the business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer remains dissatisfied."

Please note, the text of your response may be publicly posted on BBB's website. BBB reserves the right to not post in accordance with BBB policy, and we may edit your response to protect privacy rights and to remove inappropriate language.

While we regret we were unable to reach your desired resolution, we sincerely hope you will continue using BBB's services for pre-purchase information.

Sincerely,

Omar Cerezo
Complaint Specialist
BBB Complaint Department

So Google successfully utilized the loophole of the BBB complaint not being filed under the same email address that the YouTube account was registered under.  Going back to the BBB page for Google, the details on the closed complaint were as follows:

The last statement states "Please follow up on the case you have, there should be instructions to appeal a strike within the email."  Ironically they ignored not only the original appeal made on YouTube, but also the fact that it was stated an appeal was filed, which adding insult to injury was also ignored.  The status on this has been sitting like this since the end of September:

As for appealing a video that isn't actually there, this is pretty much a proverbial finger directed at the victimize customer.  This is EXACTLY why I will NEVER be paying into YouTube Red & still have not put a credit card on my Google Play account, nor do I ever intend on putting any money towards Google in any shape or form (guess that means switching to Google Fiber is now out to of the question & I've been looking to switch from the money-grubbing company of Comcast for a couple years already, but i won't go back to CenturyLink after what they pulled with my bill).

While I've already made most of my videos public again (at least those that were public before I de-listed everything from YouTube), I have made a few changes.  As already stated, any Namco/Bandai game will NOT be listed publicly on my channel anymore, only listed on other sites; this includes any playlists relevant to games published by Namco/Bandai also.  The other restriction that hasn't exactly been publicized (until now) is that currently I am not publicly listing (meaning being uploaded as unlisted) or providing subscription notifications on new videos uploaded to YouTube (although they may still appear in playlists that are still public, just not in the uploaded videos section of the channel) until the strike expires.

All streaming is being done on Twitch at this point (however certain games have had archiving of those streams disabled for various reasons, the main one being potential muting of videos due to music in the game's soundtrack), I won't be publicly streaming on YouTube ever again (any streaming on YouTube will be done as unlisted & embedded on other sites...that is, if streaming ever gets re-enabled on the channel, as currently that function is still banned in response to the inaccurate strike).  I'm still considering whether streaming to DailyMotion would be an acceptable alternative to game streaming on YouTube, but I do know that game streaming on YouTube is now dead on my channel & won't ever be happening again; any streaming to YouTube will only be for the purpose of unlisted, non-gaming material embedded into other sites.

UPDATE:  On 11/22/2016, I got a response back from YouTube on the strike filed on my account:

Ironically, there was no actual video here, it was the stream page on it's own that got flagged, more than likely due to the description.  One other thing noticed was the reason of violation also changed to the new quoted "Violation of YouTube’s policy on spam and deceptive practices.":

While the reason for the strike on the stream page remains the same, the changed reason indicated for the reason the strike was issued only further verifies the fact that the stream page was attacked by Namco/Bandai through abuse of the report function to censor the link to my Dragon Ball XenoVerse review outlining further information about the game (along with links to the official site, PS3 version of the game in the PSN store, GameSpot, GiantBomb, Wikipedia & personal character planning for the game) despite there being no active stream at the time it happened, which means they must've went to it directly via manual entry of the URL, therefore could be classified as Internet Stalking as there was no direct link otherwise (the embedded YouTube stream was removed from the Live Gameplay page on this site after the first incident & shouldn't have shown on my channel unless a stream was actually active, where I haven't done anything with it since that first incident, meaning the unchanged description from the first incident left me open to further abuse from Namco/Bandai abusing YouTube's report system to force illegal censorship).

One other thing to take into account here, it only shows that appeals against publisher abuse of the report function usually is only going to be taken seriously when it's a "well-known" YouTube channel.  A few examples of where appeals were accepted in publisher-censoring report-abuse situations include:

These were special cases where I know YouTube realized if they allowed the strike & deleted video to stay that way, they would be losing users/customers, traffic, reputation & in the long run, revenue through ads.  Given my channel is not very popular & for the most part unknown, it is expected they felt there would be no loss if I were to lose access to my streaming abilities (not that I was using it anyways on this last situation & it wasn't public anyways unless you went there via manual entry of the URL directly, but the low amount of subscribers I had indicated my channel wasn't very popular).  One other thing to point out is each of these YouTube reviewers also posted a follow-up video to the abuse of the report function, where I never did in video format, I did over a long bout of comments posted to my Discussions tab over a period of 19 hours the first time it happened, which I expect was the only reason it was reversed, as it was reversed directly after I mentioned taking legal action against YouTube.

One other matter to take into account is how long it took for them to respond, which literally took them two months simply to reject the appeal.  I can understand there being an excess of appeals they may need to respond to (especially if they're throwing them around like candy from a newly smashed piñata), but this seemed more than a bit excessive...  My channel has been attacked twice by Namco/Bandai, both on Dragon Ball XenoVerse streams, even if the second time it happened there wasn't actually a video involved (despite what the claims of YouTube are).  YouTube may have contacted Namco/Bandai to determine why they kept doing it, then searched for a loophole to make the strike stick.  Then there's also the matter of the opened BBB complaint against Google as it appeared the YouTube appeal was ignored, where Google utilized a loophole to avoid having to do anything about it; the opened BBB complaint against Google likely only drug out processing of the appeal & furthermore likely solidified the fact that YouTube would reject the complaint in retaliation to the fact that Google's BBB reputation dropped due to that complaint not being taken seriously.

ONE THING IS CLEAR:
You take risks sharing anything to YouTube, regardless of whether it's live broadcasts or recorded videos.  Gameplay videos & streams are prone to attacks from publishers, anything with music is likely to get muted or warrant a strike against your account & anything adult-oriented is guaranteed to gain you a strike or account termination once YouTube realizes it's there.  So what does that leave?  It means Google is a safe-haven for those who own copyrights only, while leaving those without copyrights in the warpath of abusive publishers.  This means this community media sharing site is not so much community anymore as it is corporate, seeing as only publishers are safe from retribution through abuse of the report function.  Those who own copyrights are king on YouTube, leaving those without at the mercy (or perhaps I should say lack thereof) of those wielding a copyright banhammer.  I know this wasn't the original view for YouTube, but this is what it's turned into & it's only going to get worse farther down the road if YouTube doesn't do something to put a stop to it.

You might be able to get away with home videos, but be careful about any background music or catchphrases that somebody may say, as anything somebody owns a copyright to that material can flag a video for any reason (this happened once to me in an activist stream against indoor smoking/drug use, where there was some poor quality music playing in the background, that video flagged not once, but twice).  Game streams ABSOLUTELY should not be done on YouTube & considering Twitch recently added the ability to allow uploading, Twitch would be a much better alternative even for the videos themselves.  YouTube's report standards are too slack for those who own copyrights & too strict for those who don't.  It may have a better layout with more functions, but does better functionality offset the heightened risk over using another media sharing site?  The only reason why I intend on leaving my YouTube channel open for the time being is for viewing over the mobile app (seeing as the site don't work properly in mobile browsers) & because Steam hasn't allowed linking from other media sites yet and doesn't allow direct uploading (relying on YouTube as storage for sharing of videos on Steam); were it not for Steam relying on YouTube for sharing videos, I would likely remove all my videos & move them to another service (with the exception of perhaps a few that aren't public & not gaming related; one in particular was aired on Fox 13 News & shared on the Fox 13 Now website of a crazy hail storm that covered the streets like snow, which would explain how it got over a thousand views in under 2 days).

All gameplay-related streaming I now do on Twitch & depending on restrictions that would get those videos muted or if I'm boycotting a company, I may disable archiving of streams, however I'm still recording on my side in case it needs to be uploaded.  I could upload all videos to Twitch from now, except those that I want to share on Steam would have to be uploaded to YouTube (that doesn't mean they need to be listed publicly, however).  YouTube is all about restrictions & penalties, leaving those who have fallen victim to the abuse in the past (even if not their fault) in fear of the next time it will happen.  Make enemies with certain companies & they will stalk your channel looking for opportunities to further penalize your channel simply because they didn't like something you said about them.  If you review games (or products in general) & those reviews are bound to turn negative, it's better to use a different service rather than risk the impending abuse of YouTube report functions against our channel.  This is one of the reason why I have a personal site, to do review that are likely to get censored otherwise over a free service & given enough time, I'll find a way to allow streaming of those videos from this site & not have to rely on sites with broken (easily abused) report systems found on sites like Blogger/Blogspot, WordPress & YouTube, meaning they will have to go through my host, which I expect won't allow abuse of the system as community media sites are prone to allow happen.

UPDATE:  On 8/1/2017, while going through my Video Manager, I ran across the video (or lack thereof) that caused the strike that YouTube/Google refused to appeal to find the reason had been changed once again:

I don't know when the reason for this joke of a strike happened (the reason for the strike happening may have been one huge ironic joke, but the severity of the penalty was not), but I realized this approximately 9 months after I had stopped checking the matter & writing updates to this review almost daily due to the flagrant attack & YouTube/Google protecting the accusers.

Again I'm going to point out there was no video to begin with & no running stream; this permanent marker in my Video Manager is simply when Bandai/Namco flagged my broadcast page (despite nothing running on it for 2 months, since their last attack on my channel), simply because of the link in the description pointing to my Dragon Ball XenoVerse review, something they have made quite clear they do not agree with & will respond with extreme prejudice to protect the reputation of products that do no deserve the reputation they are fraudulently attempting to uphold by censoring negative reviews.

At this point I am considering creating a Metacritic account to get some details regarding this game (and the aggressive retaliation from Bandai/Namco), seeing as this seems to be the site that most gamers go to not only to review games, but also to get rating before they purchase.

Last updated 8/1/2017