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.”
“The litigation will progress until Valve obeys” sounds an awful lot like extortion.
They are clearly trying to double/triple dip on shit that already been paid for and licensed.
Whats next?
Make us individual game owners pay license every time we download and install the game?
Lest we forget, Unity tried to do just that and walked back due to backlash.
Unity never tried that? They wanted to charge the developer using Unity. It was stupid, but they pay for unity one way or another.
And tariffs are for charging the company being imported. They never tried pushing those lost costs onto the customer
They wanted to charge per game sale. It’s not “per download” but it’s close enough for most consumers.
They were changing their pricing model. It doesnt matter if its a flat cost or per download cost or tierd pricing on a range.
No matter what, unity is getting paid when usage reaches a limit, it was never entirely free at scale.
Customers were ALWAYS paying for unity one way or another, it wasn’t anything new.
This is how it’s been done for decades now? Every game you purchase off of Steam, Xbox, PlayStation is just a license to play that game.
Really?
I don’t recall having to pay a fee every time I redownload or reinstall my game…ever
Suggest reading into software licensing and understand the different types of licenses that could be used.
Every time a company tries to restrict the number of downloads/reinstalls for a game that you buy a license for, it has backlashed so catastrophically that they’ve walked it back.
So it has happened, yes, but there is no situation currently with game distributors where you pay a license for a single download. They’re all pay once, download in perpetuity.
Don’t get me wrong here, I understand the pushback from the community in this regard and i’m not try to defend proprietary software licensing.
I’m more of letting the original commenter know that they actually don’t own the game or game files they purchase from common store-fronts, they simply own a license to download and play the game.
This is a fact that has been made apparent repeatedly. We know.
However, you were replying to this:
With this:
…which is patently false.
Sure buddy.
Username checks out.
Of course, buddy.
Sounds like you’re describing yourself here.
Refused to accept documentation from a valid source.
Instead of having a discussion, you proceed with a pointless “Sure, buddy” at an attempt to deflect from the topic.
You chose to make the two comments above, I simply humoured your ignorance and lack of understanding of the subject.
Sure buddy.
Keep it up, maybe you’l get to pay a license fee for repeatedly posting, too.
Yeah, like isn’t this steam’s schtick? You give up a third of the purchases for them to just handle this kinda shit? I’m not defending them, just stating.
Edit: hive mind activated.
Steam is a game Plattform, not a game publisher
Half life 3 fans in shambles.
real disappointed all that HL3 hype a month or 3 back ultimately ended up being a big fat fart of nothing.
First time?
nope. Just a frustrated, blueballed gamer sick and tired of shit ending in clifhangers with no finish.
Doent help that valve have openly admitted in the past that they have little interest in making games outside of experiments to play with new technologies, who cares about the players invested in the narratives they’ve created and refuse to bring any conclusion too.
Confirmed!
With Game publisher I meant that Steam neither published GTA, nor any other games listed there