Halo, and Destiny composer Marty O’Donnell who has worked for Bungie for decades, but was fired from the company after issues with Destiny’s development , has contempt for court over his use of Destiny assets and now owes Bungie tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

In April of 2021, Bungie served the composer who created the original Halo music with contempt of court papers over Destiny videos uploaded to O’Donnell’s YouTube channel and also other platforms.

Some of these were early versions of the Music of the Spheres, the basis for 2014’s Destiny.

Bungie stated that O’Donnell, Bungie’s veteran audio director until he was fired in April 2014, was ordered to return all material related to Music of the Spheres and Destiny, and was prohibited from sharing or performing it as it was part of a 2015 injunction.

The problems began in 2019 when O’Donnell started uploading versions of his work to Bandcamp, Youtube, and making money off of it. He was not supposed to share such work or profit from it, as the injunction did not allow for such acts to be done.

O’Donnell has now been forced to remove these materials from Youtube, and message all of the providers where people can buy it from to have it removed. He will also have to make a statement which agreed by both Bungie and O’Donnell’s part, stating that he did not have legal authority to possessor provide material related to Music of the Spheres or Destiny and asking anyone who previously downloaded any such assets to delete them and refrain from sharing and will destroy any copies of them

O’Donnell must also pay Bungie all money of any kind he received from the sale of related materials uploaded to Bandcamp. And O’Donnell is ordered to pay Bungie’s “reasonable costs” associated with the contempt proceeding, including attorney’s fees, as well as fees associated with the third-party examination of his electronic devices.

Currently these fees are around 100,000 USD but, O’Donnell’s lawyers are trying to renegotiate this, as they do not consider it fair.

Hopefully it will get sorted out in the end, but it does look like O’Donnell has been hit pretty severely by the law

Source: Eurogamer