Streamers are expressing their protest against Twitch and sabotaging their streams to show how bad streams would be without in-game music. Twitch had advised streamers to stream without music to avoid warnings and bans. A clip about Skyrim from streamer Jambo has even gone viral.
What recommendation are streamers protesting against?
- Twitch has advised streamers to mute music in video games while they stream. This is to avoid copyright complaints from the music industry. The music industry has been pressuring Twitch since May 2020 to finally address copyright issues. Twitch has admitted mistakes in this matter.
- The recommendation to “mute the music” is a controversial interim solution while Twitch is working on better solutions. Currently, it is risky to “stream with music” on Twitch, as it can lead to warnings and bans. Even the biggest streamers are now fearing getting banned from Twitch if they receive another “DMCA strike”.
- The interim solution is heavily criticized. Streamers creatively protested against Twitch’s recommendation to “stream without sound” over the weekend by actually streaming without sound.
Skyrim with homemade sound effects goes viral
These are the best protests: Streamer Jambo has created a viral hit with her protest stream. She showed the RPG classic Skyrim in a “copyright-friendly version.” She simply replicated the sound effects in Skyrim herself .
Recently, there was a copyright complaint for “Wind in WoW.” This cannot happen to Jambo in her version of Skyrim when she creatively portrays what sound, for example, a signpost or a cabbage would make.
The clip reached nearly 240,000 views on Twitter. People are excited.
The clip from “Chainbrain” is also drawing a lot of attention. He played the rhythm game “Rocksmith,” where sound is extremely important, completely without sound, as Twitch recommends. All you heard was guitar strumming.
The clip was viewed by about 160,000 on Twitter.
Other streamers aimed to show their fans what “Twitch without music would be like” or how to “safely avoid DMCA strikes”.
Horror shockers like Resident Evil 2 are also without sound and lack atmosphere:
Rhythm games are more of an audio description:
In any case, the current difficulties from Twitch have resulted in some creative clips.
It shows that “Streaming without music” is not a piece of advice that seems well thought out.
The conflict between Twitch and the music industry has been going on for several weeks now and is escalating more and more. Because there is no security for streamers, they feel that the dispute is being fought at their expense. This has already led streamers to delete all their videos and clips on Twitch – also a recommendation from the platform:
Streamers are deleting their life’s work from Twitch because they fear a ban
