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Spec Ops: The Line permanently removed from Steam and other digital stores
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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The same thing happened to the first Alan Wake before they worked something out to get it back (even though it took almost a decade). Consequently, that's also one of the reasons they wrote original songs for the sequel. It's very much a gamble these days to license music for games. More or less puts it on a timeline to be removed at some point.
Couldn't they just insist on a perpetual license?
Or just remove the music or whatever..
Unfortunately, there's some thematically appropriate uses in the game and this is sometimes applicable in other media.
Perpetual sync rights licenses aren't unheard of, but typically these require an ongoing revenue split of sales or a big up front. More often than not, limited rights are used to save scratch and because its going to be for a set period, like 30 days (for an ad campaign).
In fact, I wouldn't be shocked if Take Two opted for perpetual, and decided they won't afford a per unit sale anymore, and pulled the game to stop paying.
So basically music rights owners are too greedy and demand so much money for a reasonable license they have publishers can't afford it? Sounds about right.
If you have time for some reading, here's a really great article from a few years ago that talks about licensing in video games and how complicated it can be (the first half of the article is really the only relevant part). Depending on what exactly you want to do with the music in/with the game, a developer could be looking at having to deal with more than one license. I imagine it could get expensive very easily.
Pyrocynical used Midge Ure's cover of "The Man Who Sold the World" in a video covering Half-Life 2 or a mod of it, and that meant Midge needed a cut, the original writer David Bowie, his estate needed a cut, Kobalt Songs, who owns the rights for Midge's cover needed a cut, Warner Chappal, who owns the Bowie library needed a cut, ASCAP needed a cut, PRS needed a cut...
You only get a small fraction of who owns what off SongView. It's a removed. Pyro paid $24,000 for the sync rights. That's the budget for like five of his videos right there.
I wish this process was easier. Contacting a label's sync office is typically the start of the nightmare.