Update October 30th, 12:30 PM: Ubisoft has contacted us and discussed the matter further, revealing that a glitch on the HitRecord site was behind the issue, where it was showing that nothing had been paid out to musicians working on the songs included in Watch Dogs Legion.
“HitRecord made all payments in August to all contributing artists whose music was included in the 10 Watch Dogs: Legion songs. In fact, as of today, all but four of those checks have been cashed,” Jared Geller, President & Co-Founder, HitRecord.
Additionally, the HitRecord site has now been updated and it shows over 20k in payments made out to artists.
As part of our commitment to transparancy, the original story remains below, although we have changed the caption on the image to reflect the fact that it shows the glitch, and removed the line regarding reaching out for additional information.
Apparently, there are musicians that contributed work to Watch Dogs: Legion earlier this year and last year that have not apparently been paid yet by Ubisoft. The music was made through HitRecord, which is actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt's platform.
On HitRecord, musicians collaborate and create music from a community of musicians, and Ubisoft used to create a bunch of songs used in the game. These songs are "Riot", "Fight for Freedom", "Got You Running", "Sound Off - Battle Anthem Metal Song", "Unite and Conquer", "Rise For War", "Over My Shoulder - Paranoid Rap Song", "Awaken the Anarchy", "Welcome To The Revolution", and "I Am Your Virus".
There's a post on HitRecord detailing exactly how exactly musicians would expect to be paid, with Hitrecord's Community Director noting that "we've paid out about $3 million to contributing artists all over the world." Of the ten songs that Hitrecord was contracted to do (which was later increased to 11), there would be a community payment of $2,000 for each song, with the money "divided between the artists whose contributions are combined to create the final version of the song." Once done, Hitrecord will go through the song manually to determine what sized share that the musicians should be awarded for their work. If you've done a lot of work, you'll get a bigger share. Makes sense.
Despite 11 songs being completed, there haven't been any payments made. This is despite the fact that the songs were all marked as completed on February 19, 2020, over eight months ago. That isn't good. What's also not good is that in-game there's little indication that the tracks were completed by a community of artists, with the in-game radio listing 'HITRECORD' instead of the artist's names. According to Forbes, who first reported on this story, to find credits of the artists take waiting through nearly 15 minutes, even on the fastest scroll speed.
