Twitch Users Report DMCA Flags for In-Game Sound Effects

If you regularly broadcast your gameplay action on Twitch, or stream on one of the many other platforms available, then you’ll undoubtedly have had to become far more familiar with DMCA laws than you initially anticipated. Well, presuming you want to continue to look to grow your channel without encountering any legal problems that may result in your streaming career being cut exceptionally short!

For example, playing music during your stream (from a licensed source) is a huge no-no, and can often see you landed with either a warning, temporary mute (of audio), or in a worst-case scenario, an actual takedown/strike on your channel.

It seems, however, that in a report via GamesIndustry, following the latest Twitch DMCA crackdown, streamers are in something of a mild panic as it seems that in-game audio sound effects might now be triggering DMCA flags!

Twitch Takes DMCA to In-Game Sound Effects

In the report, Twitch users have said that various seemingly benign aspects of included in-game audio sound effects (from a wide array of titles) have been creating some major problems on their channel. Just to give you some context as to how ridiculous this is, such DMCA notifications to people have included grandfather clock chimes, bird/insect noises, police sirens, and even wind sound effects!

Put simply, with this latest purge, if you were mildly confused before about what you could and couldn’t use (in an audio sense) on your live stream, this has just made it about a 1000 times more terrifying and confusing!

What Should I Do?

Rather annoyingly, the only thing Twitch has recommended so far is that you receive a notification, you may want to (in the future) disable any in-game music and/or the sound entirely from the game!

Now, playing regularly with a friend who streams games such as Call of Duty: Warzone, I know first hand just how scared he is that the in-game music may accidentally trigger something involving a DMCA takedown and, put simply, if this trend continues, without any clear and uniform guidelines to follow, people who legitimately try to do their best to keep within the rules are simply just not going to know what they have to do anymore!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!