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.”
Oh I thought it was actually unlawful to stream the music of a game, thanks
It can be. If you look on a lot of the websites for video games they grant licenses to stream the game’s audio assets in the context of streaming gameplay.
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.
Once again reminding people that you can sue anyone for anything. Doesn’t mean it’ll go anywhere
But the game publishers already had licence, and if they didn’t have a licence then their beef is with the publishers not the storefront.
Anyway I’ve bought GTA V from physical brick and mortar stores in the past, so are they going to start suing the brick and mortar stores as well?
Hopefully they lose this case because copyright law is an absolute joke. It hasn’t been fit for purpose for about 20 years.
Does the RIAA know these scammers are trying to muscle in on their scam?
Isn’t the PRS the British equivalent to the RIAA? Apparently, they’re notorious for perfecting RIAA’s overlitigious actions. Suing a woman for singing to herself while stocking shelves.
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
Yeah it’s probably like corruption the optimal number isn’t 0 but as close as we can get without hamstringing society. Make it just hard enough so that those who would do it if it was easy can’t do it easily and then you have 90% less corruption. Think of it like piracy, it was big in the 2000’s when buying DVDs was a thing and storage was getting cheap but record labels and studios were not able to update their business model and the easiest way to get most media for the average user was something like Napster. When streaming came along and Netflix had a massive catalogue and was better in every way to cable and same with music streaming platforms at first piracy almost stopped completely and is only coming back due to enshitification. We need to implement a model like Netflix streaming which aligns incentives for politicians to make good policies and not sell out the country from under us for personal gain by making said decisions have actual negative and immediate consequences, be it trading in the stock market while in office or for a ster period of 2 terms after they serve their time in office, being a lobbyist for a set amount of time before or after presenting themselves as a candidate, and enforcing an open period after a law is drafted for public review and ability to lodge complaints and a 2-4 year reassessment of the law to see if it is actually doing what it was set out to do or not and repeal it if not (with exceptions for laws that govern long term policy such as schools where it can take 14 years for the policy to actually show concrete results.
Oh they do, at a great expense, and the committee writes a very long detailed document about why their idea is pants on head crazy, which of course they don’t like, so they ignore the committee and then they do it anyway.
There have been so many lawsuits against Valve recently from so many different angles. I’m not usually one for conspiracy but I wouldn’t be shocked if this is a coordinated campaign to unseat Valve from their monopoly on the PC gaming market so that other games industry corporations can move in. They’ve been trying and failing to break into this market for years because Valve has built so much consumer loyalty.
Microsoft is looking to butt in on the pc gaming market with their new Xbox project I wonder if it has something to do with that.
I’d be surprised if it wasn’t microsoft angry at valve for pivoting to linux. Gaming is the last major stronghold for home computing dominated by microsoft, it’s all been replaced by platform agnostic web apps and mobile devices for 90% of non-gaming use cases
Microsoft had a game store for a long time and they utterly failed to do anything meaningful with it. I can’t imagine this new attempt is going to be any different.
If it isn’t publicly traded, they can’t take over it, enshitify it, and squeeze it until it’s useless. So of course they hate it.
What’s the VPN uptake in the UK these days, considering the state of government restrictions and surveillance lately? If Valve just said fuck it and pulled out of the market, would they even take a financial hit? Or would most of that revenue magically shift to other countries/currencies?
Isn’t this kind of like suing blockbuster over music in the films they rent? Seems a bit daft, but there must be a reason they think it might succeed.
If they win, they set a precedent and then start suing everyone. If they lose, they don’t lose much.
From what I’ve read elsewhere, precedent is already set. Other game storefronts providers, including Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, do make such payments to PRS. Valve is the odd one. I’d love it if someone here could confirm or deny this.
There is also the question of it that was set by court precedent, or settling. I would assume that settling doesn’t effect precedent.
Correct.
I don’t really understand this, but that’s exactly what it seems like.
It seems similar to the idea that you could sue Google for copyright infringement because it serves a website that infringes copyright. Like… valve just serves the content and facilitates sale, right? The act of infringement wasn’t committed by them, it was committed by the game developers. Am I mistaken?
From what I understand, the music was used under licence by the game developers. The plaintiffs want Steam to also pay them for a licence to offer the game, which is already legally using the music, on their store, which is absurd.
Interesting, but I can see how this might play into their favor too. If the developers license to the music doesn’t cover resale/relicense, and maybe they’re arguing that the music (by extension of the game) was licensed to Valve in a manner that isn’t covered by the original license? Effectively meaning, valve can’t profit off the music by any means; developers had a non-extendable license to it, allowing only for distribution to consumers who don’t resell?
But you still wouldn’t sue Valve over that, would you? You’d sue the developers for damages due to breach of contract?
If the games are using the music in violation of copyright and valve acquired it and is selling it, the distribution rights part of copyright law allows the copyright owner to sue anyone in the supply chain. If the music was originally licensed properly, then PRS is just looking for a settlement.
Once you purchase a legally distributed work, you are protected by the first sale doctrine, which allows you to do pretty much whatever you want with your single copy.
But with Steam you haven’t purchased a copy. First sale doctrine isn’t likely to apply. You’ve purchased a license for access.
That’s the relationship between consumer and Valve though. I’m thinking what’s more relevant is whether or not the relationship between the game developer and Valve is in breach of contract between PRS and the game developer.
Any idea if Valve technically only has access licenses as well? Or did they buy a copy to license out themselves?
I think the issue here is that the game developers may not have any contract with PRS. Historically they wouldn’t have had to - they’d license the music from the big music labels, stamp their game onto a CD and sell a product. Now they’re not just selling a product - they’re licensing access to a “performance” of it. Valve is the playing an active part in this by “performing” the works on demand. It seems stupid to me, but that’s the world of content licensing.
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.
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?
PRS vs Testes
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.
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.
That makes sense.
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
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
Rothschild loses their lawsuit against Valve and instantly Valve gets more troll lawsuits against them. What are the odds.
Oi do you have your music loicense?
Do these lawsuits backfire if the ones suing lose? Cuz this is very clearly not on valve to sort but the games. I’m guessing they are hoping to strike gold with 1 lawsuit as opposed to having to go after the game developers individually, who may just stop using their work in the future which valve can’t do… because they don’t use their work already.
But is it just a case you made lawsuit you lost, oh well some lawyer fees and it’s over? Or do they have to pay valve for wasting their time and their legal expenses too?
It’s a common law court, the party that loses pays the majority of the others legal fees. In common law the risk of losing usually prevents stupid lawsuits.
Thank you for the succinct answer!
Can’t they just leave the one company that’s been consistently good to its customers alone?
No, Firewire400. They can’t :(
Luckily, I think Valve has some good lawyers and big companies in the USA have to be used to this sort of bullshit.
“UK wants to extort US company for taxes on a product and service literally everybody likes”
Tea time.
