Today, the Atomic Heart trailer was blocked on the official YouTube channel of the Mundfish studio, which used the song “Music connected us” by the Mirage group. The official reason is copyright infringement. According to the head of Mundfish, Robert Bagratuni, the trailer was illegally blocked.
For the first time, the video was shown at a joint presentation of Xbox and Bethesda at the recent E3. The game debuted at the exhibition as one of the key AAA titles that will hit the Microsoft console as part of the Xbox Game Pass.
There was a lot of content in the trailer that Mundfish had not shared before. As a sound design in the video, the 1988 track “Music connected us” by the authorship of the Mirage group was used. The trailer was posted both on the official Xbox YouTube channel and on the Mundfish channel.
Today it turned out that the video can no longer be viewed on the Mundfish channel. According to the previous link, an alert appears, according to which “Mirage Studio has filed a complaint for copyright infringement.” It’s still available on the Xbox channel.
On forums and social networks, they immediately began to suggest that the game developers for some reason did not acquire the rights to the track for the video prepared for E3.
However, from the message transmitted App2Top.ru By Robert Bagratuni, it follows that the company has encountered a patent troll.
“Our studio acquired the rights to this composition in full a few months ago. Everything is legally correct and the title documents for the use of the phonogram, as well as the sublicense agreement was signed on both sides, after which we made the payment and received the rights to use the music of the Mirage group in our trailer.
However, after the video was published, we received a stigma from a certain “representative” of the Mirage group – the Top 7 agency, which allegedly represents the interests of the group. At the same time, the representatives of “Top 7” refused to provide us with both the title documents regarding the musical composition we used, and the documents on the basis of which they represent the group.
Neither we nor the agency through which the rights were acquired were able to contact the Composer directly.
We believe that our trailer is illegally blocked, because the applicant, acting allegedly on behalf of Mirage, did not provide us with any evidence that he was somehow connected with the studio, nevertheless, in an ultimatum tone with elements of blackmail, he demanded to buy the rights again from him for a completely non-market value. All this looks like echoes of those dashing 90s and raiding that flowed into the Internet.
This applicant knows that we have legally acquired the rights to use the composition and intentionally prevents the use of this musical composition in our trailer. Currently, we have filed a counter-complaint to YouTube and hope for efficiency in making a decision by the platform. If our content is not unblocked, we will defend our interests in court.”