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.”
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?
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.
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.
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.
This is the type of thing that pushes developers towards AI music generators and similar tools.
Being a piece of shit human being should be enough disbar lawyers.
This kind of lawsuit only makes things worse for musicians who are already struggling with making money performing and recording. This will be challenged, beaten and leave a bad image for artists as not everyone is going to draw logical conclusions from it.
It’s not about artists anyway despite their claim, it’s about labels. The artists doing well are doing their own thing recording, touring, selling merchandise and making sure their followers are getting value for money. The traditional labels are losing control the same way the magazines did.
These idiotic lawsuits. First of all, this isn’t even Valves responsibility. Second, Steam/Valve are small frys compared to Amazon/Apple/Google/Microsoft. In gaming they may be smaller than Sony and Nintendo and those two have full on closed software platforms. Steam is one software store among many on Windows, Linux, and MacOS. All these groups want to enshittify PC gaming. They want to enshittify personal computing in general. Turn pre-iPhone smartphone operating systems into iOS
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
everybody attacking Valve, maybe my tin foil hat is too cozy but it;s a concerted effort by the psychopathic elite to ruin our lives. may their glans be afflicted by a million paper cuts and a salty storm
there’s legitimate complaints against valve, but I don’t think this is one of them.
Hell yeah. This is one the last big good things left in the world left kinda on top of Wikipedia and Internet archive
Their chooks turn into emus and kick their shithouse down.
all they do is demonstrate why no game should use licensed music ever. cant stream of make videos of those games either without having to worry about this shit.
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
I think ever since Valve fought through their first lawsuit with Sierra and lucked out with them finding evidence showing destruction of evidence, they probably developed zero appetite to fold for frivolous lawsuits lol.
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.
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?
I don’t really understand this, but that’s exactly what it seems like.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Because Valve has money.
