NBCUniversal Makes Copyright Claims On Beat Saber Songs

Published: April 30, 2019 9:20 AM /

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In a recent episode of The Tonight Show, host Jimmy Fallon showed off the VR game Beat Saber. He, along with guest Brie Larson of Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame, played a few rounds, the charts for $100 Bills and Escape. Back in February, developer BeatGamesStudio announced they were turning off ContentID for all of the initial Beat Saber tracks, including $100 Bills and Escape. They wanted to do it to “support the community” and allow players to freely post their gameplay on YouTube without fear of demonetization or copyright claims.

Without ContentID enabled for the songs, there should not have been anything for the check for copyrighted materials to pick up and flag. However, it now seems that NBC Universal has started to claim copyright on videos featuring the songs Fallon and Larson played. Reddit user Jimster71 reported that after livestreaming Beat Saber, he was alerted that the video would be taken down due to the claim.

Users started Tweeting at the official Beat Saber Twitter account, who initially said that it was not something they could fix.

“We know about this but unfortunately, this is a mistake made by youtube. People should dispute it to try to have it removed. Hopefully it helps. :( at this moment there is nothing we can do about it. For youtube this is not a topic. :/” they said.

Later, there was an update that indicated they had gotten in contact with the staff of The Tonight Show, who were “taking care of it.”

https://twitter.com/BeatSaber/status/1122929969162850304

As of this writing, BeatGamesStudio has said that there should not be any further claims on $100 Bills, but there is no mention of the status of claims for Escape. They ask that any further claims be reported to them via Twitter. It is unknown at this time if NBC Universal was actively flagging videos containing the music, or if it was an automated check based on the audio from that episode of The Tonight Show.

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I've been a lover of video games, writing, and technology for as long as I remember. I have a B.A. in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana… More about John