Over the past week, YouTube took down several Destiny 2 videos. These strikes targeted various content creators, including the game’s developer Bungie. While some takedowns have been legitimate violations of Bungie’s rules, some appeared randoms – including takedowns from Bungie’s own YouTube channel.
Earlier this week, Bungie acknowledged these Destiny 2 YouTube takedowns and denied all responsibility for these actions. “We’re aware of a series of copyright takedowns on YouTube and we’re actively investigating. This includes content on our own Bungie channels. These actions are NOT being taken at the request of Bungie or our partners. Please standby for future updates.”
In their weekly blog post, Bungie brought some clarifications on this situation. The company discovered that some of the complaints came from fraudulent accounts created to impersonate Bungie’s IP protection service. The “bad actor” behind these fraudulent DMCA notices impersonated CSC, a Bungie partner that aids in IP protection, by falsifying look-alike email aliases.
YouTube terminated all fraudulent accounts. The company will reverse all takedowns requested by these accounts. Bungie believes these fraudulent actions came in response to a recent set of authentic takedowns of OST uploads. The company recently reported several videos using Destiny 2’s original soundtrack music content.
Bungie Changes Its Music Copyright Policy
Following feedback from the Destiny 2 community who wanted to use some of the game’s music, Bungie is changing its copyright rules. “Our audio team’s main priority is creating and maintaining the amazing music in the game, and we won’t be able to release every version of every song. But we do agree that we would like to create avenues for the community to fill these gaps and archive some of the music not currently available.”
The company now allows content creators to use certain Destiny music tracks, as long as they follow the guidelines below:
- It can’t be an OST song that Bungie has already released or posted elsewhere publicly.
- The content cannot be monetized.
- The creator needs to obtain permission from Bungie by contacting this email: [email protected].
Bungie says that while they want to support their content creator community, they must put boundaries to protect their team’s intellectual property and work.
