Harmless, in-game sound effects caused many streamers to receive penalities and DMCA takedowns, causing their videos to be unaccessible in their original format.

DMCA penalties and takedowns are something that nobody likes (especially if these takedowns are automated and were issued for something unrelated!), but there’s nothing worse if we don’t use any external sound effects, and yet we still get them for sounds used in a game! What sound effects are we talking about? Grandfather clock chimes, bird and insect noises, police sirens, and wind. We linked tweets from three different people, so it’s not an obscure case, and who knows how many times it has happened to others and we just don’t know about them?

Several people are unhappy about how Twitch handled thousands of the DMCA claims that came from bigger record labels – the Amazon-owned streaming website deleted thousands of videos this autumn because they don’t want to get fined for copyrighted music in said streams and videos. Then they encouraged streamers to go through their archives to delete any possible copyrighted material… only to not provide information on what would constitute a violation, who was making claims, how to contact them, or what penalties could be issued. As you guessed, this caused a further backlash.

That’s why Twitch apologized, but there are still DMCA issues on sound effects, plus there are streamers reporting either facing platform bans for years-old copyright violations or in some cases, DMCA flags on videos they’ve already deleted.

Where’s the end of the tunnel? If a game uses sound files that have DMCA issues, it’s not the streamer who should get the short end of the stick but the developer, as the streamer most of the time does not influence audio design. And Twitch recommends muting the game… really?

Source: Gamesindustry

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