The lawyer of the Mirage group explained why the Atomic Heart trailer was deleted

The current composition of the Mirage group
Recall that last Thursday, the Atomic Heart shooter trailer was removed from the official YouTube channel of the Moscow studio Mundfish.

The official reason: violation of the rights of the Mirage group (its track “Music connected us” was used in the video).

At the same time, the head of Mundfish, Robert Bagratuni, said that the trailer was illegally blocked. He noted that the rights to the song were acquired in full a few months ago, and the Top7 agency, which demanded that the video be removed, did not provide them with documents “on the basis of which they represent the group.”

After the publication was published, we received a letter from a representative of the legal service of the Mirage group. It reported:

• the creator of the band and the author of the song “Mirage” Andrey Lityagin was outraged when he heard the version of the song that is used in the trailer of the game;
• the song was used in the game contrary to the agreements reached earlier between the Mundfish company (represented by their representative Art Project LLC) and the Top7 publishing house, which represents the interests of Andrei Lityagin;
• previously, all the conditions for the acquisition of the rights to the work and the soundtrack for use in the game were agreed between the “Art Project” and “Top7”;
• previously, Top7 warned Mundfish against acquiring rights from any third parties;
• in violation of the agreed agreements, Mundfish entered into an agreement with another legal entity – NMI (National Music Publishing House);
• earlier, Andrey Lityagin did transfer part of the rights of the NMI, but there was a condition: any rights to processing to third parties can be transferred only with the consent of the licensor (here — Lityagin);
• in the case of the reworking of the track for Atomic Heart, no one applied to the author for permission;
• this is not the first scandal related to the NMI and the Mirage group: previously, according to the position of the legal service, the tracks of the group were illegally performed by its former soloist Maria Sukhankina, as well as the Gruzdeva sisters (according to the situation with Sukhankina, a court has already passed, he sided with Lityagin). All of them received “rights” from the NMI;
• as also noted in the letter, now the right to perform the hits of the Mirage group and use the Mirage trademark is only available to the official composition of the group with soloist Ekaterina Boldysheva, and the right to negotiate and represent interests on the use of content in the media space is only available to the Top7 publishing house.

The letter also contains a comment by Andrey Lityagin.

Andrey Lityagin

Founder of the Mirage group

The situation from the point of view of law was commented by Nikolay Rakushin, CEO of PlayJoWee studio, whose assets include game projects, as well as experience working with show business.

We have requested a comment from Mundfish.