PRS Vs Valve and What it Means For Games Developers
It has today been reported, in various music and games industry press outlets and blogs, that the UK collection agency, PRS is suing Steam parent Valve for using music without appropriate licences. On top of DMCA takedowns, this highlights the changing landscape of the use of music in games, particularly the need for games developers and publishers to work closely with copyright and master holders within the music industry.
With Steam being the largest digital distribution channel for games, it makes sense that they’re PRS’s first port of call, it’s easier to make someone else enforce a new system for licensing than to go after developers and publishers one-by-one. In the same way that employers collect and report their employee’s tax directly to the government, this cuts down on the infrastructure and staffing that would be required at the top level.
This probably isn’t going to fix all the ills with the current systems governing both industries. The pace that technology has moved at over the last 25 years has blurred a great many lines, with games and music becoming more intertwined, growing over the last 6 years with the boom in live streaming and social media.
It’s extremely likely that this will lead to PRS, and its global counterparts, introducing a new licence for performance rights that will have to be paid not just by distributors, but by streaming platforms as well.
For games developers, the real take away here is that getting music licensed properly is going to become an increasingly more important part of the development cycle, with particular attention paid to intended usage of licensed works, as well as composer and commissioning agreements. Clearing music at the development stage is now a majorly important part of production.
Metadata rears its ugly head again here, and with no clear international standard, things can again get blurry depending on which territory you’re working in and what overarching agreements are already in place with collection agencies. This goes for record labels and artists, as well as games developers. Music Publishing especially, can be murky and opaque, even for those with experience.
It’s of no doubt that music brings an edge of atmosphere to a game that is irreplaceable. From the other side of the coin, as an artist, having your music feature in a game doesn’t just add extra revenue to bolster against the dilution of royalties within the industry, but exposure that is hard to replicate outside of film and TV.
Where things will end up is anyone’s guess. Personally, I’d like to see a collaborative approach by both industries in a way that provides value not just for the musicians and developers, but more importantly, for the fans of both.