As Censored Gaming has spoken about in the past, DMCA strikes are used by copyright holders
to protect their intellectual property.
But sometimes they’re also used for censorship.
Many websites, such as YouTube automate their DMCA strike system, and not always with great
results.
In the past copyright holders have used this lack of oversight to remove material and reviews
that cast their product in a negative light.
Claimed content is often taken down immediately, and getting the strike removed can be a long
complicated process.
But abusing the system doesn’t always go smoothly for copyright holders.
When exposed to the public, their abuse of the DMCA has often caused outrage, hurting
them far more than a negative review would.
So with that in mind let’s take a look at five times DMCA notices have been used to
silence criticism.
Number One: Day One: Garry’s Incident Back in October 2013 Youtuber TotalBiscuit
released a twenty minute “first impression” video of “Day One: Garry’s Incident”
by developer Wild Games Studio.
TotalBiscuit was very critical of the game, finding the framerate, quest mechanics, level
design and overall gameplay subpar.
The review must have made an impression because soon afterwards it has hit with a DMCA notice.
Suffice to say, striking a review by a popular YouTube channel did not go over very well.
As outrage and support for TotalBiscuit erupted on the game’s steam community forum the
CEO of Wild Games Studio, Stephane Woods issued this statement on Steam:
“We protected our copyright because Total Biscuit has no right to make advertising revenues
with our license.”
But Stephane’s words did not end anything.
TotalBiscuit responded with another video where he accused Woods of lying and pointed
out that they had received a steam code from Woods himself.
He further accused the company of “not being interested in consumer protection”.
Perhaps unable to deal with the fallout, Wild Games Studio relented.
By the end of October they had issued a public apology, removed their DMCA strike and the
video was restored to YouTube.
Garry’s Incident faced other accusations but for now let’s move on to number two:
Slaughtering Ground.
In November 2014, content creator Jim Sterling released a first impression video of “Slaughtering
Ground” by developer Digital Homicide.
The video’s title describes the game as a contender for “worst game of 2014”and
Jim questions several of the games design choices such as targeting alignment, ammo
distribution, and enemy design.
He also mocked the fact that the game was complete and up for sale.
The review prompted a response by Digital Homicide, who themselves posted a video on
YouTube mocking Jim.
Sterling continued to release videos mocking the game and the pushback from the developer.
Seemingly in response to his criticism, Digital homicide then filed a DMCA strike on Sterling’s
playthrough and company co-founder James Romine sued Sterling for "assault, libel, and slander".
Romine later filed suit against steam users for personal injury and subpoenaed Valve:
the owners of Steam for the user’s identities.
Valve did not take this sitting down and removed Digital Homicide’s entire catalog from their
service.
Unsurprisingly the case against the steam users was eventually dropped.
Court documents claim “The Plaintiff’s business was destroyed completely” This
left Romine unable to continue the lawsuit.
However Romine’s case against Sterling persisted until February of 2017, when it was dismissed
with prejudice.
Jim released a statement on his website “the Jimquisition” stating his belief that the
resolution was the result of his lawyer’s “enviable reasoning ability”, convincing
Romine of the results of going to court.
But Digital Homicide was not the only developer to duel with Sterling in 2014; which brings
us to number three: Island Light.
When Russian developer Kobra Studios released a trailer for its game: Island light, the
reaction was not universally positive.
Sterling mocked it, comparing it to an “RSPCA commercials, but for zombies.”
Kobra filed copyright strikes against several youtubers, including Sterling, HarmfulGaming
and Attackslug.
Attackslug’s case is especially shocking as he posted no footage of the game.
His video was just himself talking about the controversy.
In most of these cases, copyright holders claim used footage from games as being the
reason for the strike.
Following the usual pattern Steam and Twitter started venting at the studio over censorship.
Many of the creators took to twitter to voice their concerns.
Mocking the developers,Sterling wrote: “How could a game as derivative as Island
Light have the nerve to copyright strike anybody?
They owe *every other zombie game ever* royalties” Furthermore he filed a counterstrike to put
the video back up and it is now back on YouTube.
Things also got really interesting on Steam.
Comments were deleted and at least one user alleged that Kobra had plagiarized the Island
light logo from a work on Deviant art.
One Steam user accused them of hypocrisy for striking down reviews while ripping off art.
It’s not clear whether it was Steam’s decision or Cobra’s, or what the reason
was, but within four days of the DMCA strikes, Island Light was also removed from Steam Greenlight.
Moving on, we see the use of DMCA strikes for intimidation in Number four: World of
Tanks.
In March of 2017 World of Tanks Community Contributor SirFoch posted a rant about an
update to the game on YouTube.
The rant covered the design of a new tank and what he saw as the increasing “pay to
win” aspects of the game.
Responding to the rant, a community manager contacted him on Discord, telling him he was
removed from the contributor program, and threatening to file a DMCA strike if he did
not remove the video.
Writing, “I don’t really have a choice here!”
SirFoch removed the offending video.
However SirFoch released screensshots of the conversation which infuriated members of the
World of Tanks community, and moved onto mainstream sites.
At first, community management denied filing any strike or trying to censor anyone.
In this quote to Kotaku they tried to explain their position:
“We regret having to go to such extreme measures in SirFoch’s case, but we also
don’t consider those measures to be censorship because we weren’t trying to silence SirFoch’s
opinion, we were simply seeking to curb the extremely profane language of a member of
our contributor program.”
But eventually management took back their actions, stating:
“We acted too quickly when we threatened to have YouTube remove SirFoch’s video through
a copyright infringement complaint.
We have apologized to SirFoch for making that threat, and we are continuing our conversation
with him on next steps.”
Last up is an odd case of a fan game developer filing a DMCA, in number five: Firefly Online.
Back in 2013 developer DarkCryo was involved in an attempt to make an online fan game based
on the TV series Firefly.
The original product was shut down but attempts were made to revive it.
Enter the blogsite FuriousNads, run by Christopher Frankonis.
The site is no longer operating but can still be accessed through archives like archive.org.
In a series of articles Christopher described his ongoing feud with the developers and accused
them of a number of ethical and legal violations, including misrepresenting their relationship
with Fox entertainment and violating terms of service and US securities law.
On the developer's revenue sharing program, he explains that DarkCryo was, to quote:
“Soliciting funds with a promise of a possible return on the investment via a revenue-sharing
scheme that at the very least should be considered a violation of Indiegogo’s terms of service,
and at the most potentially could run afoul of laws governing the sale of private stock,
depending on how the laws of the United States and Canada (where DarkCryo is located) consider
and define an investment via “in-game currency” intended by design to be easily converted
into real-world cash.”
About a month after this article DarkCryo filed a DMCA against FuriousNads for using
their logo in articles.
Christopher received a letter from his host stating:
“As you are probably aware, web hosts do not have much leeway in responding to complaints
like this.
We do not get to judge fair use or anything of that sort; we are required to remove anything
someone submits a claim about, until which time as you submit a counter-complaint.”
Humorously, rather than file a counter strike FruiousNads replaced the logo with this:
Like all other censorship-related matters, abuse of DMCA to silence criticism is something
that Censored Gaming is always keeping a close eye on.
With how easy it is for DMCA takedowns to be made and the lack of penalties for those
abusing the system, these types of stories are, unfortunately, alarmingly common.
If you would like to see more features based around DMCA abuse, please make sure to leave
a comment below and hit that subscribe button and, until next time, thanks for watching.