Back 4 Blood streamers are risking Twitch bans just by playing the game
Turtle Rock StudiosThe upcoming first-person shooter, Back 4 Blood features copyrighted music on its soundtrack, which means it could be a risk to stream online.
Back 4 Blood is a new multiplayer zombie shooter from Turtle Rock studios set to come out in full on October 12. But before the actual release, devs let fans know about a potential issue with the game — its music.
As we’ve seen throughout 2021 streamers and Twitch have had to wrangle with the playing of copyrighted music on stream. Progress has been made on the issue in recent weeks, but there’s still the risk of being banned if you play the wrong music.
On October 7, Turtle Rock warned streamers they should turn the music down if they plan on streaming Back 4 Blood, to not risk a ban.
Attention creators! If you’re streaming or planning #Back4Blood VOD content, this is important:
The jukebox has licensed music that will play when used. We do not own the streaming rights for the songs that play so be sure to turn your music off when interacting with the jukebox.— Alissa (@MissAlissaBarry) October 7, 2021
“Attention creators! If you’re streaming or planning #Back4Blood VOD content, this is important: The jukebox has licensed music that will play when used,” Barry tweeted. “We do not own the streaming rights for the songs that play so be sure to turn your music off when interacting with the jukebox.”
The good news is that the jukebox isn’t the only option in the game to listen to music with, but the fact that streamers could get banned from music that’s already included in the game seemed to rub some people the wrong way.
“If you can’t get streaming rights, then don’t use the damn music in your game!” one user replied. This was a common complaint, but others pointed out that the majority of people who play games aren’t streaming them.
However, devs were the ones who pointed the issue out in the first place, so it’s fitting that they seem to have a fix on the way already as well.
Workin on it!
— Alissa (@MissAlissaBarry) October 8, 2021
Replying to another user who was wondering if a “stream safe” mute option would be added to the game, Barry confirmed devs were indeed working on one.
Whether it’s available by the time Back 4 Blood launches on October 12 remains to be seen, but if devs are already tweeting about it, there’s a good chance it could be.