Comment on Undertale's Music Is In Danger
JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 6 months agoundertale is one of the best indie games that has ever been released with its fantastic writing touching and funny story relatable characters and high quality Sprite art however undertale is also known for having one of the best soundtrack in video game history with the OST getting millions of views on YouTube alone it gets to the point where there have been thousands of fan remixes new unique music using undertale as inspiration YouTubers like myself using undertale’s music as background music in their own videos and fan games taking years of development which includes remixes and covers of different themes from the game how ever undertale soundtrack is in danger allow me to tell you a story about how one fan game has completely changed the dynamic of how undertale’s music is handled and the company behind undertale’s music publishing is going against Toby Fox’s wishes this is the story of how undertale’s music is in copyright hell Our Story begins with well me and this awesome fan game called undertale yellow that took 7 years to develop it also begins with Materia music publishing and if you don’t know who they are they’re basically the people that publish undertale and delun soundtrack they handle all the legal stuff surrounding the music so Toby doesn’t have to deal with it himself including copyright now for you to understand this story let’s go back to a little bit before undertale yellow’s release material music publishing has always caused a lot of problems with people using undertale’s music specifically through YouTube’s copyright system basically a couple years back undertale’s music was always getting copyright claimed left and right on YouTube through their autoc claim system and once I got claimed there was nothing that you could really do about it now Mr Toby Fox didn’t actually want this happening so when he talked to material music publishing they basically told him that there was nothing that they can really do that there isn’t a quote do nothing option in YouTube’s copyright system that prohibit autoc claims however Toby wasn’t willing to back down with how his music was being handled so he struck a deal with material music and publicly released a statement saying that if any song from the undertale Deltron soundtrack ended up getting autoc claimed that you should dispute it and it should be resolved and that was supposedly the end of it unfortunately I wouldn’t be making this video if that were the case this brings us to today undertale yellow if you don’t know what undertale yellow is it’s probably one of the most hype undertale fan games that has ever been in development this thing took 7 years to develop and truly was a 10 out of 10 experience it’s clear that the team behind it really designed this game as a love letter to undertale the writing the gameplay the art and the music it’s all so good however remember material music yeah yeah they didn’t actually like the concept of pieces of undertale’s music being included in their soundtrack which in return had a massive domino effect with how undertale soundtrack is being handled in the YouTube copyright system and it’s in the most infuriating way so let me tell you the story of one of the most obsurd enraging and disgusting moments in undertale’s history I should preface this story by saying that if I’m seeming a little bit too dramatic or emotional at points it’s mainly just me being entertaining and additionally this isn’t meant to complete completely on material music it’s meant to be constructive criticism because what happened with them handling this situation truly needs to have attention brought to it so what better way to bring attention to it is by making a video on it without other way let’s begin officially all right so the date is December 9th and undertale yellow just dropped hundreds of content creators around the world are currently playing the game and that includes me hi I was streaming the game on the day it was released and the day after because I was feeling really sick on release day either way my plan for these two streams was to combine them together and upload one really long playthrough the game because having these two streams be separate is kind of weird and I thought that I was going to be able to do this without much of a problem of course given the context of what I talked about in the intro it was certainly much of a problem now before I go ahead and talk about what the problem is and obviously it’s going to be with Materia music I should note that Materia music didn’t actually do anything to either of these live streams when they were initially finished keep this in mind anyway combining these two streams actually did end up being slightly annoying as it took me roughly around 10 hours for my computer to render the full SU hour video however I created a thumbnail and uploaded the video to YouTube expecting everything to be all fine and dandy I mean especially because both these live streams didn’t end up getting copyright claimed at all it’s also important to say that I don’t usually have problems with material music claiming my videos weirdly enough they typically only claim my live streams so since undertale yellow consists of unique remixes and original music I wasn’t worried about copyright claims at all however then I uploaded this video turns out that when YouTube finished checking the video the autoclaim system had detected that the song enemy approaching from undertale soundtrack Was Heard for 10 seconds of the video in the entire 6 hours was completely not able to be monetized this obviously made me upset but I was used to stuff like this at this point as a YouTuber so I sent in my dispute knowing that they would remove the claim because that’s what Toby Fox told them to do however instead of waiting for the claim to be released I decided to just cut the part out myself and render the video for another 10 hours I figured that would be faster than waiting for them to release the claim because it takes between a day and 2 days for the claim to be removed anytime I get one so that’s what I did only for YouTube’s autoclaim system to once again detect the same song enemy approaching in a completely different spot this gave me a horrible realization the battle music is getting claimed this meant that no matter what I did past this point I would not be able to cut out the copyrighted music because it’s the battle music that’s getting claimed so my only option at this point was to wait for Materia to release dispute however I heard from my friend Shay that contacting material directly can help speed up the process so that’s what I did I added them on Twitter and they responded with ping I
JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 6 months ago
mean you you could have just said email I don’t I’ve never heard anyone say ping either way when I emailed the address I sent them over the claim information and they were super friendly about it before they took a look at the claim they asked me to review their YouTube FAQ and then send them a link to the video that had the claim on it so that’s what I did I looked through the FAQ and the only only thing I could find that my video didn’t follow the rules of was that I needed to credit Toby Fox and material music in the description to be fair I’ve never heard of this rule existing before but hey it was simply them asking to give credit to the people that own the music so I can’t be too upset about it credit is nice I also sent them the link to the video too which they requested now it’s very important to note here that I sent them the first video I uploaded not the second video I uploaded it’s also important to note that I disputed the claims on both videos please keep this in mind as I continue this wonderful story I was certain that the claim was going to be completely resolved at this point because they were being super kind to me over email and Jay had reassure me that when I emailed them the claim would probably 100% be removed and then they emailed me back damn it do you want to know what they said thanks sibbles it looks like undertale music was used in a different game so the copyright claim will stay in place for this one so at this point I was backed into a corner with nowhere to go and I got a completely vague answer as to why this claim got denied for release I had never in my entire life had heard of this before from anywhere it doesn’t even make sense for one Toby fox said explicitly on Twitter that if you get autoc claimed a dispute would be accepted and the claim would be released those were Toby Fox’s words and what about any of the other playthroughs of undertale Yellow on YouTube why do so many other content creators get to have their playthroughs up but why is my playthrough specifically having a problem where the battle music is getting copyright claimed and when I asked them to remove the claim which Toby fox said they should be doing they deny it this response wasn’t even in their YouTube FAQ there was nothing in there that said that undertale music can’t be played when other games are present but you want to know what was even more terrifying about this email this email response was so vague that I couldn’t even tell what the actual problem for this was does this mean that in order to use undertale music on YouTube the video has to be about the actual game like if you were doing a video as say about something non undertale related are you allowed to use undertale music I had to know more so I followed up with an email clarifying that the music that is getting claimed was a remix of the original theme which by the way on their YouTube FAQ says is allowed and additionally that other people are uploading their playthroughs of the game without any problem of copyright claims and then they just completely ghosted me I never got a response or any sort of clarification of what they meant by this now those who have kept a sharp eye have realized that my undertale yellow playthrough actually did end up getting uploaded with full monetization so let’s go over how this happened remember earlier when I said to remember that I sent them the link to the first video that got copyright claimed yeah well turns out they didn’t even look at the video in question because they denied the dispute for the wrong video so what’s funny about this is that they denied the dispute for the second video I uploaded but accepted the dispute for the first video I uploaded and if you recall the first video was the one I sent them in the link so my only guess as to what happened here is that they saw undertale yellow in the title denied the claim on the first video they saw that had undertale yellow in the title and then continued to accept other disputes from other videos that were sent to them which happened to include my video and since they’re meant to accept any disputes that get sent to them they just accepted it without second thought what this was majorly
JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 6 months ago
infuriating and confusing at the time but since the video eventually got its monetization back I wasn’t willing to take this further until the CEO of material music decided to throw a fit on Twitter this is what finally made me want to make this video so as I stated before undertale yellow has its own original soundtrack and they want people to go out and listen to it especially because there was clearly a lot of effort put into it and people enjoyed the music that can be heard in game however according to undertale yellow’s Twitter they couldn’t put the majority of the soundtrack on streaming surfaces although this seemed to have actually been a joke and they’re just in the process of doing it although even though this is a joke the CEO of materium Music decided to release a massive Thread about undertale yellow and you want to know what he said according to his reasoning undertale yellow’s soundtrack couldn’t be put on streaming services because of the lack of a license and encourag people for in the future to contact Toby Fox about doing something like this beforehand you can probably tell the problem with this the entirety of undertale yellow’s project did get approved by Toby Fox 7 years ago to exist and on top of that Master Sword remix the director of the project did obtain the license for the music through drro kid of course this didn’t stop Mr Sebastian wolf from stepping down against his arguments and then proceeded to call undertale Yellow a passion project that took 7 years to create that is 110% free to download a commercial Venture this is when I forced my hand I publicly posted about them refusing to remove the copyright claim from the undertale yellow and then proceeded to talk about how this isn’t even in their YouTube FAQ it’s important to note here that the CEO Sebastian wolf was replying in Mass to a bunch of people’s comments so I was sort of hoping that he would see my quote Retreat that was gaining a lot of traction and respond for some sort of clarification and of course I got nothing that is when a couple hours later I got a bit curious knowing how bad this company is with disrespecting undertale I wonder if they had updated their YouTube FAQ I mean it definitely sounds like something they would do and sure enough a couple hours later after I had called the CEO out on Twitter they updated their FAQ prohibiting the use of fan games that use music from the original game which includes remixes or covers this is just insane to me this has never in the history of this game happened before and what’s funny enough is that right before this part in the FAQ they say that remixes and covers are perfectly fine except you just can’t have them in fan games for some reason this is what got me really concerned if they were willing to completely change the rules on a dime out of nowhere what stopping them from changing the rules again Sebastian was continuing to reply to people on Twitter and finally responded to other people talking about my copyright claim problem of course not me myself but regardless he made another tweet going more in depth about the problem here claiming that undertale yellow uses undertale music synchronized to gameplay that isn’t from undertale so I decided to respond to this asking why specifically are fan games such as undertale yellow not allowed to get their claims removed what about all the other videos that exists that use undertale music as background music and don’t have undertale as a game present why specifically are fan game videos denied because I neglected to see the difference here once again no response at all and I know he saw my reply because it was definitely flooding his notification because of how many likes it got in fact when asked this question by other people about if it’s even safe to use undertale music on non undertale videos there there there just wasn’t an answer and this is what has me the most concerned out of anything there are hundreds of YouTube videos out there that use undertale music as background music what if one day Materia decided to come out of nowhere and start claiming undertale music on non- undertale related videos I mean it’s clear they changed their mind on fan games not being allowed to use undertale Music what’s stopping them from claiming other videos too I mean let’s take a look at their YouTube FAQ it doesn’t actually say anywhere in their FAQ if undertale music is allowed or not on non undertale gameplay videos in fact it says vaguely they will investigate claims if there is gameplay footage alongside them but what gameplay footage are they talking about here is it undertales is it another game with undertale music as background music we just don’t know the answer to this and anytime they get asked this question they don’t give an answer copyright law can be very confusing but I think it’s important to definitely not blame YouTube here sure it was their aut claim system that caused this whole issue in the first place but that’s just them trying to obey copyright law I think it’s important to look at Material music here and give them proper feedback with what they’re doing because it’s extremely unprofessional I mean the CEO literally called this an experiment and not to mention he isn’t even updated on YouTube’s copyright system he didn’t know that there was an option for gam playay when you can dispute copyright claims what he’s the CEO of the company now despite all this don’t don’t go and harass Sebastian wolf on Twitter he’s a human too and just like everyone else he also has emotions I’m sure if he got hundreds of people screaming at him on Twitter it’ll only make the situation worse and may want to make him enforce worse rules and plus I’m not here to make anyone feel bad the only purpose this video serves is to bring attention to the problem so that any content creator watching this knows of these rule changes and how clunky this company is to deal with and I’m not even all that mad I was just screaming to make the video more entertaining additionally Toby Fox if you’re watching this by chance please give some kind of official public statement like you did before that’s the only way this can really get resolved at this point but that’s all thanks for watching