The Performing Right Society (PRS) has “commenced legal proceedings” against Steam owner Valve over the use of its members’ works on Steam “without permission.”
The organization claims that while games right across the spectrum use music to “transform play into emotional, immersive experiences,” Valve has “never obtained a licence for its use of the rights managed by PRS on behalf of its members, comprising songwriters, composers, and music publishers.”
PRS claims “many game titles which incorporate PRS members’ musical works are made available on Steam,” including “high profile series” such as Forza Horizon, FIFA/EA FC, and GTA.
PRS said that as it had sought to work with Valve about the licensing issues “for many years without appropriate engagement from Valve,” it has now issued legal proceedings under the UK’s s20 Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 and requires any game that uses PRS’ works to obtain a licence.
“The litigation will progress unless Valve Corporation engages positively with discussions and takes the necessary license to cover the use of PRS repertoire, both retrospectively and moving forwards,” the organization said in a press statement.
Dan Gopal, chief commercial officer, PRS for Music said: "Our members create music that enhances experiences and PRS exists to protect the value of their work with integrity, transparency, and fairness. Legal proceedings are not a step we take lightly, but when a business’s actions undermine those principles, we have a duty to act.
“Great video games rely on great soundtracks, and the songwriters and creators behind them deserve to have their contribution recognised and fairly valued.”
They just want to cash in twice.
This whole thing is utter bullshit. It sounds like the game studios DO have a license, and they’re claiming that Steam does not but should. Because you can’t tell me that Microslop, EA, and Rockstar, three ENORMOUS giants in the gaming industry, have willingly opened themselves up to litigation by not licensing music in their games, something they’ve been making for decades. Why are they entitled to a license from the developer AND a license from the shop selling it? Of course, they’re not, but let’s hope this doesn’t set precedent that says they are.
Next logical step would be to sue producers of radios, speakers, headphones and so on, I assume. Their devices “perform” the music, after all.
And then they can sue hospitals for helping bringing new ears into the world.
You joke, but this is actually how it works in places. As recently as 2015 we paid some % of all storage media sales (think HDDs, nvmes, flash drives, anything that can hold data really) to our RIAA equivalent to ”compensate for private copying”. Now it’s no longer baked into the prices, but they are paid directly by the government, as in through taxation.
Love this. If the dev needs a license to play it, Steam needs a license to sell it, is it really much different for them to then sue owners for not purchasing a license to listen?
Cyberpunk 2077 has an option specifically for streamers to not play music in that touchy area. I know project red is big but not quite as big as those other guys, and even they had a mind to protect themselves and other public personalities.
That’s because your Stream/Video on Youtube/Twitch/Whatever will be deleted and your account flagged if the algorithm detects copyright protected audio in it.
IIRC it’s because the streamer can’t play the music to people, since they don’t have the license for that, the game has the license to play the music, not the streamer.
Streamer mode is typically for one of two usecases:
- The streamer plays their own music, so being able to silence all game music simplifies things
- The game might contain copyrighted music by known artists, which can trigger automated enforcement. In most jurisdictions music used in a game is fine to stream/record because it’s covered by the developer’s/distributor’s license, but that doesn’t stop overzealous rights holders from placing bogus claims that can muck up your revenue, so it’s easier to just not play music that you don’t yourself have license to play
That makes sense.
That’s like suing Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, etc for an artist in their library not licensing a sample correctly
That’s like suing Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, etc for an artist in their library not licensing a sample correctly
No actually, it’s like suing Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, etc for an artist in their library licensing a sample correctly.
Not that they like money from Steam despite the games having a licence for the music. If I read the article right.
I feel like they should get a committee of people together who understand how technology works before they start making laws about it
But that would make sense and be an effective way of making laws and governing and more importantly would stop those who haven’t meaningfully added to society from being able to easily profit from it in a way that others can’t.
how do you make sure this committee isn’t corrupted as fuck by loyalist cock money
I mean we could go the catholic church method of multiple layers of verification, strict requirements for entry, and all encompassing moral framework. It isn’t guaranteed to be perfect, but it might just be good enough
awwe did you favorite multi-billion dollar company get sued for platforming IP theft? You are so justifiably butthurt and you are a reasonable, thoughtful person worth engaging.
What the hell is with the Flurry of legal attacks against Valve now?
Sounds like they want to get paid twice.
Next in convenience store owners and employees need to get a music license for selling CDs and DVDs so the public.
Apparently PRS already took it to another level by threatening an employee for singing to herself at the store she worked at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/8317952.stm
What fuck that company lost their goddamn minds. Wonder they are fucking stupid enough to sue YouTube for something similar. Maybe because Google billion dollar corporation that would bankrupt them.
Lets hope judge smart enough to throw this lawsuit out, and they have to go bankrupt due to a counter suit.
Wonder they are fucking stupid enough to sue YouTube for something similar.
They don’t/no longer need to, YouTube has content ID and copyright claims.
Meanwhile, big AI vacuums up the entirety of music produced by everyone from piracy sites for profit and noone bats an eye
Even if you only get your news from here, you can’t possibly have missed that AI companies are getting sued…
Abolish piracy!!!1
What even is this lawsuit? Can somebody help me understand the accusation(s)?
Because it kind of reads like “you sell games that have our music, and don’t pay us” which obviously makes no sense. Most of the article is absolute fluff.
P1: prs is suing valve.
P2: valve doesn’t have a license to… Do what? Is this extortion?
P3: prs music is on steam.
P4: valve ignores us. We want to sue them for infringing “the UK’s s20 copyright, designs, patents act 1988”
P5: musicians work hard. Prs protec.
P6: music important. Musicians important.
Sounds a lot like a license troll. Probably the specific court and potential violation of a law were picked with care. Perhaps they looked through valve’s terms in advance to find a loophole, design their own terms to exploit that etc.
I don’t think it’s a troll. I think it’s specifically game publishers trying to carve out a niche and get more power to make more money, both from valve, and on their own digital distribution platforms by saying
“valve needs to pay us to sell our games because we are the license holders. And since we are the license holders, we can pay ourselves from sales on our own platforms”
So I think it’s dumb on the surface, but ultra shitty underneath.
Like if they win, that’s a bad precedent.
If they lose, that’s still precedent.
And in the process, there’s a SHIT TON of discovery, of a company that doesn’t give out much information that competitors would love to get their hands on. Because if you know how a competitor operates, you can undermine them. Knowledge is power. It’s super pathetic, but also scary, like a demon trying to figure out your style so they can steal your friends. Hopefully, we can rely on " just don’t be shitty" to hold up.
All of these lawsuits popping up are like a distributed attack on Valve.
Except it’s not game publishers who are suing. It is an organization representing musicians, some of whom have made music which is included in games which can be purchased through Steam.
[…]organisation representing
musiciansLarge Corporate Record Companies who bought the rights off someone[…]You know, if they didn’t have music… In games… That could be purchased through steam… Then this would make even less sense. Don’t you think?
Honestly, if this case doesn’t get thrown out before discovery, I’ll be shocked. Stores don’t licence music, the game devs do. If a game dev infringed, there is already a takedown process available to remove the content from Steam.
The dev studio company… or their publisher.
But yeah, insane lawsuit. It’s funny knowing that in that article they say that Valve is ignoring them, and has been ignoring them.
Edit: which raises the question: who the fuck published this article? Who is giving this stuff publicity? Dark money? Or is it just because it’s ridiculous, to begin with?
I feel like by this logic Amazon and Walmart would also need to obtain lisences to sell video games that have music in them…
That or I’m too tired and bread dead to understand the stupid shit I just read.
The only way I can see this being different is steam shows preview videos of the game which have music.
Amazon often only shows the box it sells in and pictures.
Its still stupid because the game developer has the rights and that page is their place.
If I remember correctly, Walmart does have televisions up in the tech department displaying advertisements and trailers for movies and games.
And Amazon often has a video in the image caroussel
Yeah but isn’t there a bunch of fine print when you put your game on steam saying “you allow us to ADVERTISE AND PLATFORM YOUR FUCKING GAME SO THAT IT SELLS”
bread dead
… Wha?
I can assure you that I’m still alive and do not currently hunger for brains of the living.
As a general rule of thumb if something sounds stupid then it’s probably been reported badly with some key information missing. I’m betting the music industry press reporting will be very different from that of a site called “gamesindustry.biz”.
Here’s a music news site: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/gaming-giant-steam-faces-legal-action-from-the-uks-prs-over-alleged-unlicensed-use-of-music-in-games/
It sounds every bit as stupid there, if not more so because it’s apparently a normal aspect of distribution licensing in the UK.
Game developers and publishers typically secure sync licences to cover the embedding of music in their titles.
However, in the UK, those sync deals do not extend to the making available of that music when games are subsequently distributed via download or streaming platforms.
The ‘communication to the public’ right — i.e. the making available right — sits with PRS, not individual music publishers, meaning Valve requires its own separate licence as the platform operator distributing games that contain PRS members’ works.So remove all those games from Steam, the largest game market on the planet. I’m sure that will get more people wanting to use PRS stuff if they can’t distribute on Steam.
… fucking shakedown assholes.
I’ve seen a lot of stupid patent and copyright trolling over the years.
I bet 100€ that they’re trying to double dip and get valve to also pay for licensing songs that the individual game publishers already licensed.
Literally my entire point was that people are offering some strong opinions without having read the complaint, and here you are demonstrating exactly that.
Big bread over here psyoping me into eating toasted and buttered crispy steamy salty spurdough chewy bread
Are they going to sue to operating system owners next? What about the web browser that offers the steam installer download?
why stop there! lets go after keyboard manufacturers for allowing people to type words.
Or the dastardly USB Implementers Forum, who not only creates devices that allows those keyboards to function but a storage protocol commonly used by pirates!
For the benefit of those here suggesting this is a spurious or vexatious lawsuit: in the UK, it’s standard for a plaintiff to be forced to pay all the respondent’s legal fees if they lose.
So… this is still a ridiculous case, but they’re wealthy enough they aren’t too worried even if they lose it? All right.
My suggestion is that probably their lawyers have examined the case in rather more detail than the armchair lawyers on here pontificating based on an eight-sentence summary. Incidentally, PRS are a 175,000-member artists’ rights collective that very often represent a significant portion of individual artists’ incomes, they’re not some sort of grubby billionaire-owned patent troll.
I dunno about that given what another person replied with about threatening someone from singing in a store.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/8317952.stm
My hate of the copyright-ownership side of Hollywood / Nashville / Atlanta, etc. has been burning white hot since the days that the RIAA was suing people using P2P networks. But, I had to admit that at least they could probably make a valid claim for copyright infringement. But this?!
It’s interesting how it’s the “Performing Right Society” (which I’ve never heard of). The “performing” part of that suggests that maybe they have an issue with people sharing clips containing music, or live streaming games where they share music. But, again, why Valve? Sure, people can share clips with friends. And, occasionally you see developers streaming their games. But, nobody is really “performing” live streams on Steam. I suspect they just think Valve is rich and so they can strong-arm them and Valve will settle to make them go away. I hope they bit off more than they can chew. Valve is indeed rich, and they have a tendency to be stubborn. I think they might well fight, and fight hard.
I wish a possible outcome was that the PRS ceased to exist. But, I suspect they’re like a flea or something, and even if you knock them off from this attempt to suck someone’s blood, you can’t kill them, and they’ll just find another victim.
Steam will win against these trolls who spend more time in press releases and patient trolling …than doing anything of worth.
