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.”
“The litigation will progress until Valve obeys” sounds an awful lot like extortion.
They are clearly trying to double/triple dip on shit that already been paid for and licensed.
Whats next?
Make us individual game owners pay license every time we download and install the game?
Yeah, like isn’t this steam’s schtick? You give up a third of the purchases for them to just handle this kinda shit? I’m not defending them, just stating.
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
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.
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.
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.
Not that I love ActMan, but day to day news about Valve controversies do make me feel the same about these claims as ActMan. It really feels like if suddenly everyone wants to sue Valve to the ground so they got destroyed and other lesser fair gaming companies secure their market.
Valve is no angel. But if we compare to others, they are next best thing to a Saint.
That last sentence. Fucking sucks this where we’re at.
yes, when the a company that pretty much popularized loot boxes, skins and trading is the good one you know things are bad
Steam has by far the best user experience of any onljne game store and just softwarr store in general, with refunds, a good and accurate category system, accurate reviews, per game forums, a place to share community mods, achivements, cross platform support, a friends system, group system, cloud sync, a way to devs make availible private and public beta builds, good and granular regional pricing and many more
so many features, yet tim sweeny could never understand why people believe epic store is inferior
Valve does seem to have a clause in their partner contracts to say all music must have proper licensing so they got that covered. They’ll just ask PRS to point out which one and those games are gone within the hour. They can also give PRS a temporary license to the entire library to help them. Things are different if a judge says Valve needs to proactively check licensed materials in the game files, but that requires a library and methods to check against, so that’s another discussion.
I think what PRS is stating is that Valve needs a license for the music to even display the game in their store, which is utter nonsense.
They aren’t claiming the games are infringing, if that were the case with something like Forza, they would go after the game publisher.
It looks like they are trying to say Valve is infringing by having the games in their store.
I’ve looked at a few other articles. It seems that PRS says the game publisher has to buy a license for the music in the games, and Valve needs to buy a separate license and pay PRS again for distributing the music in the game. And this would be retro-active, so Valve would have to pay a license fee for every piece of music in every game it ever sold with PRS music. They claim Microsoft and Sony do pay this.
Does this mean places like Walmart and Costco that sell games and media also need to now get licensing?
What about smaller shops and libraries that sell or loan media or other products.
Honestly this just seems like a tax on a tax on a tax. Next in the consumer will need to pay a licensing fee.
Next in the consumer will need to pay a licensing fee.
They do try. These are the same people that sued someone for singing while working, claiming it was a public performance.
Well that just sounds insane. Why would valve also need a license? Its the game developers who need to work out an arrangement to use their music.
Also if valve looses this apple, google, and Microsoft would get sued for the same thing so I expect them to not have to fight very hard
Does the RIAA know these scammers are trying to muscle in on their scam?
See, this is why I fucking hate copyright law. It’s so fucked and even though this is clearly fucking bogus, watch them find some kind of loophole and set a precedent
Information should be free. It is as shackled as the rest of us under capitalism.
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.
Insanity. It’s like suing a grocery shop for selling the xyz branded milk for using their copyrighted font.
I think it would be reasonable if this was a problem of small indie titles that do not have a publisher and basically wouldn’t exist without Steam. If Valve allows for content on their platform they have an obligation to ensure this content is legal. If a supermarket cooperates with a local farmer to sell their produce directly without middle men, it’s partly their responsible if the produce is made using illegal pesticides.
However, it seems unreasonable when it’s about stuff like Forza and FIFA. Then sue Microsoft and EA, for fucks sake. These games have publishers.
If a supermarket cooperates with a local farmer to sell their produce directly without middle men, it’s partly their responsible if the produce is made using illegal pesticides.
No that’s of how it works…well, anywhere. In your analogy, the supermarket relies on the supplier being truthful with their documentation for their production. That’s as far as their responsibility goes legally, they have no obligation to investigate the suppliers claims any further.
It’s like suing a grocery shop for selling the xyz branded milk for using their copyrighted font.
I came here to make this exact point.
The real reason they do it of course, is that Steam is big, and they can get more money from Steam if they win.
Juries are very unpredictable in such cases. And that’s what they are playing on.Juries are very unpredictable in such cases. And that’s what they are playing on.
This is in the UK, except in very rare exceptions, we don’t have juries for civil matters.
Ok thanks, I assumed it was in USA, since Valve is American.
That myth was largely created by McDonald’s after they were sued for giving a lady third degree vagina burns and a fused labia. “Haha, Americans are so frivolous with lawsuits, they’d sue a company for serving coffee hot enough to make you need skin grafts”.
Complete and utterly false, USA has that reputation because it’s true.
USA has that reputation because it happens all the time, because it’s easy to make a lawsuit, even often finding a lawyer that will take the case it without payment, but take the fee as a percentage of the potential winnings. And because USA has insane rules of extremely high compensations.
USA is not known for this because of a single anecdote, but because it’s very common, and because of the insane compensations, which is part of why it is so common to also try with what would be a frivolous suit in any other country.
Point in case would also be the Apple lawsuit against Samsung, where part of the case was as simple as a tablet being a fucking tablet! When even Star Trek of the 60’s realized that it was a convenient form factor.
Apple won on just about all points of the case, but in following years they were completely dismantled, with decisions that the case didn’t have a basis, and the patents were interpreted way to widely.
This was a HUGE case that cost enormous amounts of money for both sides, and the only true winners are the lawyers. The US judicial system in this regard is completely rotten and that is being abused for frivolous cases that would be thrown out in other countries.You’re right about the effect (lawsuits and the threat of the same are more common in America than Canada or the UK) but not at all about the cause.
The USA has had a decades-long choice to have our industry regulated primarily not through government bureaucracy but instead judicial liability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_through_litigation
The reply that you are replying to is so off base I wonder if it’s Google Gemini trying to pretend to be a real user. So confident, so wrong, includes some real facts, but completely misapplies them.
I edited the word “myth” to “perception” because the well informed reply to My comment changed My mind about the truth of the facts, but I still think the fact’s prominence in culture is because of McDonald’s. Though, come to think of it, we were talking about frivolous lawsuits, not total lawsuits, so I’m not entirely convinced. It could be that the USA has a completely appropriate number of lawsuits and other countries have too few. After all, the judge in the McDonald’s case awarded the lady an entire day’s worth of profits, which is an absurdly high amount of money, but absurdity was in fact an appropriate response to an ongoing problem of absurd magnitude.
Omg there is always someone bringing up this McDonald’s case every time like they’re slam dunking some new information and not just repeating comments over and over that they read in the last thread.
McDonald’s McDonalds McDonald’s McDonalds McDonald’s McDonalds.
There are hundreds of examples of real frivolous lawsuits being filed in the US. This case did not create a myth about frivolous lawsuits. This was at one time an example of a lawsuit that seemed like it could be frivolous, but later there was media coverage that told the real story. There do exist many examples of real frivolous lawsuits.
McDonald’s McDonalds McDonald’s McDonalds McDonald’s McDonalds.
- making a business decision that selling skin graft hot coffee will save more money than you will have to pay in damages to anyone injured. A decision that ultimately proved correct.
I mean many of those publishers, like it says in the article, are “high profile” and will have more than enough money to cover a music copyright issue.
But suing Valve means you only need to sue 1 company instead of dozens, and it also makes Valve responsible for keeping the songs out of its entire library of tens of thousands of games.
Theres also the factor of suing steam is like getting to sue all the ofenders at once without actually putting in the work to sue each individual studio that used the music.
Seeing that this is in UK, my guess is that if they try to take it to court, the court will simply throw the case out.
brb suing VALVe to get 50 million, just so that I can send it back to GabeN and demand a deadline for HL3.
I am pretty sure I saw that HL3 was confirmed. 😜
What are the odds that PRS doesn’t represent the rights on the music they claim to?
I’d like to say highly likely but upon reading a bit on what they are, it’s highly unlikely. They’re a union focusing on publishing right of music, so they definitely represent the owner of the music. But still insane.
They’re arguing it under section 20, probably this part
the making available to the public of the work by electronic transmission in such a way that members of the public may access it from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.
It looks like they’re arguing that by hosting the games valve are acting as a pirate MP3 site.
I think they would have to prove that they did so knowingly, which can only really be done if they ignored takedown notices.
That is silly, though, since that’s something that each developer should be arranging for as part of obtaining the rights to use the music. Either the developer has the rights to use the music as part of the game (and thus sell the game with the music), and by extension Valve can be granted the limited right by the developer to transmit and/or perform the music (in trailers), or the developer does not have such rights and they should not be selling the game in the first place.
There is much to critique Steam for… This? This is nothing but a cash-grab, in my opinion.
They’re probably going after Valve because they have more money.
Wait what? Why would valve need to license the music? They’re not making the games…That should be the responsibility of the game studio or developer that makes the game that uses the music.
Yeah, this… doesn’t really make sense, unless the goal is to get Steam to adopt a policy of delisting the specific offending games in the UK.
I am not a lawyer, but… this seems spurrious?
I don’t know, I can’t find a single example of a platform or ‘retransmitter’ being successfully ruled against, in cases where the content itself already had worked out a rights/royalties agreement with the rights holders… unless it can basically be proven that the platform operators / retailers knew that the content itself was not properly liscensed, and sold it anyway.
So basically they would have to prove that Rockstar and EA never had the proper liscensing, and also that Valve knew that.
I am going to go out on a limb and say that Rockstar and EA probably did/do have the proper liscensing.
That being said, the UK leaving the EU… makes all of this exceptionally confusing to my layman self, as to the exact current standards and precedents that are currently in play and relevant.
Identifying the audio out of an excutable would be hard to enforce. YouTube only has to do the ID. I guess a DMCA system should help but my guess it’s that it is already there.
Spoiler: DMCA it’s there and, as the water is wet, it’s already being abused.
You always sue starting from deepest to shallowest pockets.
… but that only makes sense if you genuienly believe that Rockstar and/or EA have less cash than Valve, and/or Rockstar and EA never had their own relevant liscensing agreements.
I may be wrong, but as best I can tell, there is no precedent in UK law for a platform/retailer being found liable under the cited Section 20, unless the content being distributed/retransmitted/sold itself did not have proper liscensing arrangements, and it can be proven that the platform/retailer/retransmitter knew that to be the case.
I kind of find it unlikely that Rockstar and EA did/do not have liscensing agreements in place.
My theory?
The entire Publically Traded gaming world seems to be mobilizing and coordinating efforts to get every kind of secondary organization they are connected to, to sue Valve, right now.
Because they are all financially imploding, and they’re trying to do as much damage as possible to Valve, who isn’t a part of their club, as a means of trying to level the playing field.
All these people on the boards of top gaming companies… are also on the boards of other top gaming companies, they know each other, they have people and contacts who sit in all the gaming industry lobbying groups, and the astroturf fake ‘gamer advocacy’ groups, in the IP rights groups, etc etc.
YouTube isn’t responsible for licensing any music either, but they are responsible for keeping it off their platform, and they’ve gone to great lengths to achieve this.
This was inevitable after valve caved to pressure from card processors. The sharks have smelt blood.
Gaben really just should’ve said “fuck you” to card processors and created his own PayPal-like system that doesn’t expose purchase data to card networks and is big enough that the networks can’t afford to lose them…
In case you’re not being hyperbolic (or for anyone else legitimately thinking this because I’ve heard it multiple times), I think Valve really did the best thing they could. I know Valve feels huge, but MasterCard and Visa together are over a hundred times bigger, and any payment processing system Valve could make would definitely be a pushover.
Also, never underestimate the casual normie population. If Valve lost Visa and MasterCard support, I’m pretty sure that would mean losing two-thirds of their playerbase if not more. Those people would either prop up alternative stores like Epic or Microslop’s or just pull away from PC gaming altogether.
Anyway, it’s a bit like the people saying Valve should make their own DRAM to combat the shortage. It doesn’t acknowledge how entrenched the existing manufacturers are and how far away Valve actually is from that level of manufacturing.
They just want to cash in twice.
Now do physical game label printing organization lawsuit for decreased profit from enabling digital sales.
Oi do you have your music loicense?
