Destiny copyright strikes: First the perpetrator “revenged”, now Bungie is “revenging”.

As in March 2022 rows of content creators complained about Destiny 2that their videos were deleted from YouTube for copyright reasons, many suspected an extremely excessive action by Bungie against the Destiny community. Tempers accordingly ran high. But when Bungie videos were also tagged with takedown strikes, it turned out that neither Bungie nor the brand protection company CSC commissioned by the developer had anything to do with it. Instead, someone pretended to be acting on Bungie’s and CSC’s behalf. Meanwhile, the culprit, who posed as an employee of Bungie’s trademark protection service, has been found – and Bungie is suing him for $7.6 million in damages.

Ban wave for Destiny content on Youtube

Like you at Forbes and in the court documents can read, the culprit who reported the copyright infringement to Youtube wanted revenge on Bungie. The Youtuber named Lord Nazo had himself uploaded looped songs from the Destiny soundtrack to his channel in the past. When Bungie and the commissioned trademark protection service CSC launched a wave of bans on YouTube, in the context of which action was taken against copyright infringement, Lord Nazo’s channel was also hit. Nazo, in turn, refused to take the videos offline, so the people at Youtube took action. This culminated in Nazo’s channel finally being completely deleted after 23 violations.

Nazo’s Revenge (which also highlights a problem)

Nazo, in turn, created fake e-mail accounts related to CSC and reported the videos of other Youtubers. A total of 96 takedown messages were sent. The whole process also revealed what the Bungie folks call a loophole. The authors of Forbes: “YouTube allows anyone to file such complaints, although it cannot be proven that the person filing the complaint is actually the rightful owner of the content.” After Nazo filed the illegitimate complaints (and bragged about it to friends), he posed to YouTube as a victim of the ban wave and demanded that his channel be restored – something that didn’t happen.

Bungie’s Counterstrike

In return, those responsible at Bungie have now filed a lawsuit and are demanding $7.6 million. One for legal fees, the other to compensate for the reputational damage Bungie has suffered. Because when the wave of bans on YouTube against well-known Destiny influencers began, it seemed that Bungie itself was taking action against its own community.

Officially, the developers of Destiny 2 (buy now €21.80) however, that the identified perpetrator should not be targeted or harassed by the community. “Any direct interference that does not come from Bungie’s legal department could reduce our ability to repair the damage that has been done to our community. And that is our priority, after all. You can count on our support and we will ensure that that that person gets the future they deserve,” writes Community Manager Hippy in the current TWAB of June 23, 2022.