Former Bungie music composer Marty O'Donnell, who was fired by the company in 2014 and ordered to return all materials related to Destiny and its "Music of the Spheres" prequel, has been forced to post a video on his YouTube channel requesting fans who previously downloaded any such assets to "delete them and refrain from sharing."
The veteran composer of Halo and Destiny, who managed to get Sir Paul McCartney involved in Bungie's sci-fi musical score, has been prohibited from sharing any aspects of his work on Music of the Spheres or Destiny and has faced contempt of court charges for using said material as a basis for sketches on his YouTube channels.
As reported by Eurogamer, O'Donnell was told to:
"Post a message, the wording of which the parties agree to, on his Twitter, YouTube, Bandcamp, and Soundcloud sites/channels stating that he did not have legal authority to possessor provide material related to Music of the Spheres or Destiny and asking anyone who previously downloaded any such assets to delete them and refrain from sharing and will destroy any copies of them".
In the video, which you can watch below, O'Donnell says that:
"I do not have, and have not had since at least April 2014, the legal authority to possess or distribute non-commercially available material related to Destiny or Music of the Spheres, including material I composed or created while working for Bungie. This material is owned by Bungie. If you posted any of these assets on a website or other publicly available platform, you should remove the content immediately. If you have copies of these assets, you should refrain from sharing, and destroy any copies of them."
O'Donnell, who had worked for Bungie since 1999, blamed his sacking without cause on meddling from Activision and successfully sued Bungie over his shares in the company in 2015.
[source youtu.be]
Comments 15
This is a feels like a classic case of this...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
They've just made sure this has been immortalized by making him post this. So there's that good outcome of this.
Really not my responsibility.
No one expects anyone to actually delete anything, this is just a statement he legally must make to comply with the court ruling.
I honestly find it so crazy how many industry professionals dont, themselves, understand copyright laws. You made a work for under contract, it does not belong to you!
Reminds me of a Taliban POW hostage video. Very sad
The worst part of this is that Bungie must know that no one is going to delete this stuff just because they forced Marty to ask them to. So, this is purely just a show of force towards Marty and any would be future leakers. And this just makes Bungie look worse.
Either that, or Bungie didn't realise this video was going to come off as a hostage situation, and they are just watching from thier offices with grimace.
@Tharsman It isn't that he didn't understand them. He just had the money to blow in legal fees if wanted, and felt it was dumb that something wasn't going to ever be released.
This is all so stupid. His initial leak of it was stupid and he knew better. But where the courts had my sympathy after that they just reversed it in has favor again. This looks like a hostage video. He's practically blinking in morse code to be released by his captors. And what genius at Bungie/Activision decided to beg the internet to delete warez? They do realize they just made this music spread around the internet faster than a Rick Astley track, right? I'm sure it'll be as hard to find as a Pokemon fan project.
Meanwhile I'm sure Halo Infinite opens it's blockbuster gates with a chord progression everyone and their dog knows he composed.....
Sounds like the quality of Bungie's music will take a massive nosedive, no way they are going to get any talent like this to work with them ever again, I guess they are just going to rely upon their latest interns.
This is just more proof of how the quality that used to be attached to them is long gone.
@JayJ It already did. Bungie never used his Destiny 1 score which is how this all started. They've been using someone else for Destiny 1 and 2. And it's kinda.....generic. Marty's a legend. He's probably right, Activision for whatever reason must have had something to do with it because he was with Bungie at MS with no problems, then suddenly they're at Activision and he's gone.
I kinda blame Matrick for what happened to Bungie though. If he'd just let them make Destiny for Xbox when they wanted to they'd still be with Microsoft. Maybe Phil was part of that decision too, he ran studios after all, but I assume that came from above. "We want our Halo factory!" seems more like Don's style. Phil seems to let studios do whatever they want, sometimes too much so.
@NEStalgia Yeah there has been a lot of restructuring at Xbox lately, especially when you compare what it's like today to what it was like back when the Xbox One launched. I feel like if Xbox had the management they got today back then, Bungie would still be a part of Xbox. It's just there was a lot of bad deals and bad ideas back when Bungie left. Luckily Xbox is better than ever, but I can't say the same about Bungie. Looks like they are going the way of Blizzard and everyone else who got acquired by Activision.
@JayJ Yeah, I mean, technically they're indie now, well, technically always were after MS let them walk, they were under contract for 10 years with Activision, and technically weren't an internal studio. They just got their stuff back a few years ago. But after like 20 years of being under Matrick's mismanagement plus under contract to Activisions dysfunction, how COULD they emerge as a well aligned studio. And it broke them more that parts of the team fractured and stayed with MS at 343i (which is also a broken studio that seems to be finally getting it together.)
@NEStalgia What you say is an interesting take. Maybe unlike studios like Infinity Ward which became a CoD factory, Bungie wanted to stop that process where they could and not become a Halo factory. But I think it always meant parting ways with MS and pitching this to some other publisher. If they wanted to stay with MS it was probably going to be a "make it 2 teams, one makes halo and other one makes something on the side very slowly".
Quick question is, did The Coalition also form/happen during Mattrick era?
But what I find stupid about Marty's situation is why he just didn't move on from it. He already sued Bungie and got something back. Now he could easily move on and do great work for other games instead of being stuck in the past about this one OST album that didn't work. I am sure he could easily find projects with effing Halo in his CV.
activision and EA need to be broken up,,,, they are the two worse companies in gaming, their games are either copy and paste from previous years to get idiots to buy cosmetics or in the case of EA sport games people to pay for packs of players..... its all about the bottom line if it wasnt we wouldnt have games like Anthem, or the constant copy and paste activities of CoD...each year its the same thing, the game hasnt really advanced in about 5 years...
@NEStalgia "This looks like a hostage video. He's practically blinking in morse code to be released by his captors". 😂
He has a beer in the room, at least.
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...