This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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.
That's like suing Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, etc for an artist in their library not licensing a sample correctly
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
Because Valve has money.
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.
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
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.
What the hell is with the Flurry of legal attacks against Valve now?
awwe did you favorite multi-billion dollar company get sued for platforming IP theft? You are so justifiably butthurt and you are a reasonable, thoughtful person worth engaging.
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.
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
Abolish piracy!!!!1
Even if you only get your news from here, you can't possibly have missed that AI companies are getting sued...
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.
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.
What even is this lawsuit? Can somebody help me understand the accusation(s)?
Because it kind of reads like "you sell games that have our music, and don't pay us" which obviously makes no sense. Most of the article is absolute fluff.
P1: prs is suing valve.
P2: valve doesn't have a license to.... Do what? Is this extortion?
P3: prs music is on steam.
P4: valve ignores us. We want to sue them for infringing "the UK's s20 copyright, designs, patents act 1988"
P5: musicians work hard. Prs protec.
P6: music important. Musicians important.
Sounds a lot like a license troll. Probably the specific court and potential violation of a law were picked with care. Perhaps they looked through valve's terms in advance to find a loophole, design their own terms to exploit that etc.
I don't think it's a troll. I think it's specifically game publishers trying to carve out a niche and get more power to make more money, both from valve, and on their own digital distribution platforms by saying
"valve needs to pay us to sell our games because we are the license holders. And since we are the license holders, we can pay ourselves from sales on our own platforms"
So I think it's dumb on the surface, but ultra shitty underneath.
Like if they win, that's a bad precedent.
If they lose, that's still precedent.
And in the process, there's a SHIT TON of discovery, of a company that doesn't give out much information that competitors would love to get their hands on. Because if you know how a competitor operates, you can undermine them. Knowledge is power. It's super pathetic, but also scary, like a demon trying to figure out your style so they can steal your friends. Hopefully, we can rely on " just don't be shitty" to hold up.
All of these lawsuits popping up are like a distributed attack on Valve.
Honestly, if this case doesn't get thrown out before discovery, I'll be shocked. Stores don't licence music, the game devs do. If a game dev infringed, there is already a takedown process available to remove the content from Steam.
The dev studio company... or their publisher.
But yeah, insane lawsuit. It's funny knowing that in that article they say that Valve is ignoring them, and has been ignoring them.
Edit: which raises the question: who the fuck published this article? Who is giving this stuff publicity? Dark money? Or is it just because it's ridiculous, to begin with?
Except it's not game publishers who are suing. It is an organization representing musicians, some of whom have made music which is included in games which can be purchased through Steam.
[...]organisation representing ~~musicians~~ Large Corporate Record Companies who bought the rights off someone[...]
Shouldn't they be suing the game publishers not the reseller?
So EA and Microsoft according to their docket?
No because they have a license to use the music already. They are seeking the equivalent of performance rights from Steam. They are extortionists.
Yes we’ve had first rights payments, but what about seconds rights payments??
If they sued games like Beat Hazard for letting players use their own music in the game, that'd be like suing a media player for letting people play music with it.
So imagine how much dumber this is.
For the people that don't see how manufactured some of the attacks against Valve have been lately (not that this will help convince them regardless...)
