YouTube Almost Killed Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines
Kill it with music…
Having done many a ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’ (VtM) blog recently, I wanted to look at other things, but this bit of news caught my eye and I thought it was important to discuss it, as it may have resulted in an important and popular game disappearing from YouTube. It also brings up some serious potential problems in the future should history repeat itself.
That game being ‘Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines’ (VtMB).
It was announced earlier in the month of September 2019 that the soundtrack for VtMB was coming to vinyl and CD on 25th October 2019 (source). You are able to find it on Amazon if that is something that interests you.
Some of you may be thinking that VtMB already has an official soundtrack (see the thumbnail to the left/above, depending on how you’re reading this blog), but they were licensed tracks chosen by Activision (the publisher) without input from Troika Games (the developers). The music of The Ministry, Lacuna Coil and Genitorturers are some of these bands featured in the game.
If you never heard of Troika Games, I wouldn’t be surprised. They made three games, each one became a cult classic, but didn’t sell very well upon their initial release. VtMB was released in 2004 and is based on the lore and characters from the original table-top, role-playing game ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’, developed by White Wolf Publishing. It is the most popular of their games and has grown quite the large following over the years.
You may see why this may be big news for fans of the game. Is has been impossible for the public to legally obtain the incredibly varied music for their own leisure. You would either have to obtain the audio files from some source or be one of the fortunate people to obtain the from the composer of the game, Rik Schaffer (who is also the soundtrack composer for the sequel to Bloodlines and contributed much to the constant unofficial patches led by fans of the game).
However, this news has also bought many YouTubers having videos banned for using content that is not their own.
What started to happen over the last couple of weeks is YouTubers who have uploaded any videos of them playing VtMB have had warnings from YouTube for pinching other people’s content (see below screenshot). You would be sensible to think that it was the licensed tracks that were the cause of this. For example, the song ‘Swamped’ by Lacuna Coil is featured in VtMB. The band belongs to Century Media Records, which was required by Sony Music Entertainment in 2015.
The song is found at the game’s credits, so it would make sense if only certain videos were being taken down or blocked in certain territories. Waiting four years to put a ban on a song used on a 15-year-old game is a bit strange, don’t you think? I know the process is not as simple as that, but the timing is a little bit weird nonetheless. What I’m trying to say is that these copy strikes have nothing to do with the licensed tracks.
The YouTuber Outstar composed a tweet stating that most of her VtMB videos blocked, because of Sony Music Entertainment’s (SME) recent endeavour. The original soundtrack is being released in October will be published by Sony Music Entertainment, who are not known for this sort of thing (to my knowledge at least. That is not to say they don’t do this sort of thing either).
Whereas this sort of behaviour is aimed to prevent the public from illegally owning their music (through third-party sites that can convert YouTube videos into mp3 files) such aggressive tactics also prevent certain channels from making their income.
Usually, they are music educational channels, such as the ones ran by Rick Beato & Adam Neely, who both break down the compositional elements of many songs, as well as being large music theory nerds. Now, this sort of issue now affects gamers.
‘Ok then, couldn’t she turn the music off?’ you may be thinking. Yes, she could, but all of the audio in VtMB is controlled by one slider. This means if you turn off the music, you also turn off the sound effects and the dialogue. This terrible design element is down to the infamous rushed development of VtMB. It was released incomplete, due to Activision’s brilliant idea of releasing VtMB on the same day as ‘Half-Life 2’. Bloodlines were released practically unfinished, with the only updates it got (bar one) were unofficial fan patches over the last 15 years.
Putting that (one of many) flaws aside, if you turn off the music in any other game, you still are liable for getting copyright strikes because you are playing someone’s product. Outside of that, the music in a game is at least 60% of the experience. Music is meant to enhance and support the action and drama on-screen, to pull and jerk every tear from your eyes when a character dies, to force adrenaline to run around your body when a climactic fight happens. Without music, films and games would fall just a little bit flat.
I have used the past tense in this blog because that it seems the issue been resolved (for Outstar at least, as confirmed by another Tweet from Outstar, showing a screenshot of an email she received from SME), but this incident has highlighted some really serious issues regarding the world that is ‘content creating’.
Imagine for a moment that this was not an accident and SME planned to continue their endeavour of launching copyright strikes. In Outstar’s case, she would have been in serious trouble. If you watch her videos regularly, you will know that most of her videos are revolved around VtMB and VtMB2, all of which use the VtMB soundtrack. About 80% of her content would be gone, which meant that 80% of her income would vanish too. I am sure that we have either been in a position similar to this or know someone who as and it is incredibly frightening to be affectively made redundant, especially when you have followed the rules and have done no wrong.
Fortunately, SME has the good grace to act upon this mistake, which means one must turn and point the finger at YouTube and it’s algorithm minions. There have been many articles and videos out there that have discussed in great detail about the Wild West that is the legality behind YouTube’s copyrighting systems, how certain individuals can abuse this and how the humans behind YouTube either don’t care or just plain ignorant to it all, so I will spare you of delivering all of that here.
You could argue that this sort of thing is highly justified, as any company is within legal power to step-in to stop someone from stealing their work. If you use somebody else’s work, those individuals (or company/business etc.) should, at the very least, be credited. If it’s music-related, those artists should be paid for their work. I appreciate this as a musician myself and infamously (within certain groups) became incredibly vexed when some musical material of mine was stolen.
To my knowledge, YouTube doesn’t have a system in place where the artists, record labels and YouTuber get the money that they deserve in a situation like this. Only the record label benefits, whilst the YouTuber risks not getting any money at best and losing their channel at worse. There is no denying that YouTube is an incredibly powerful advertising tool that anyone can use, and for there not be a better system in place for all parties is quite frankly absurd.
SME owns the distribution rights of the original soundtrack to VtMB. At some point, some databases and legal things were updated on their end and YouTube would have found out about it. Their bots clocked there were videos on their platform had SME’s music in it and acted accordingly, not having the capacity to understand why that was incredibly stupid. If there were people being paid to do these things, YouTube would be a happier place for content creators.
Coda
What I personally find most worrying about this little blunder is the possible permanent detrimental effect it could have had on VtMB, and any other game should this sort situation occurs again.
‘Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines’ is arguably one of the best RPGs one can play on any console. It has achieved such fame through its reputation as a cult classic, which has inspired and encouraged players to look into the source material, which is, of course, the tabletop game ‘Vampire: The Masquerade’.
VtMB is available on GOG and Steam, but as time marches on, it is quite possible that there will be a generation of gamers who may forget about Bloodlines altogether, simply for how old it is. Those who play games exclusively on consoles may not want to leap into the confusing world of PC gaming, especially with this one, where you have download fan patches just to get it to run on modern systems. If such people wish to experience the game, the easiest/safest place to turn to is YouTube, where there are many Let’s Plays of the game.
This problem doesn’t just apply to this game. Many games predate the existence of the internet, so there are many great games out there that lots of people will never get to play, simply because they don’t have the now ‘ancient’ hardware that many modern televisions aren’t compatible with. Finding a functional NES or SEGA Megadrive (for example) is not that difficult, but much of their catalogue is. Smaller, USB versions of some of these devices exist, but they are rather expensive for essentially being legal emulators that contain what the developers believe are the console's greatest hits.
If a certain retro-game is not on that mini console, you are left to YouTube for next legal was of experiencing that game, hoping that someone has uploaded footage of the entire game there.
So imagine if large chunks of gaming history is gone, because of an algorithm, a series of 0s and 1s, unchecked by any human life, not for inappropriate content, such as encouraging rape or school shootings (to choose two extreme and evil examples) but simply down to a glitch, a bug, or just poor programming. Wouldn’t that be sad?
If this blog has got you interested in checking out ‘Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines’, you should read my review blog on the game, which you can find in the link below.
What do you think of this little blunder? Who is to blame, SME, YouTube or the YouTubers themselves? Or are any of them to blame?
Let’s start a conversation, people!
