Halo composers suing Microsoft for two decades of royalty payments

pcgamer.com:

Eurogamer has the scoop on a lawsuit originally filed in June 2020 that is only now coming to light: A case where two composers of the original Halo music and the series' iconic theme are taking Microsoft to court for what they say is two decades of unpaid royalties. Marty O'Donnell and Mike Salvatori are the plaintiffs and behind countless pieces of Halo music that have not just been used in games, but sold as soundtracks, re-recorded for other games including Halo Infinite (without being credited as the composers), and now feature in the upcoming Halo TV series.

The article contains a full interview with O'Donnell where he goes into the nuts and bolts, but the basic claim is that he and Salvatori, as the company O'Donnell Salvatori Inc., licensed the Halo music to Bungie—even before the company was bought by Microsoft—and subsequently struggled to get Microsoft to recognise the nature of this deal. Things only changed when it was decided there would be a separate release of the soundtrack.

«That's when that first new contract came in, where we were like, 'Yes, we will sign over the publishing rights and the copyright on this music for Halo to Microsoft.',» O'Donnell told Eurogamer. «However, I wanted to do it the way it's done in movies and television, where the composers are still ASCAP [American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers] composers, and it's not a pure work-for-hire. There is a contract for any ancillary royalties—so use in commercials, use in anything outside the game, specifically, or sales of soundtracks.»

O'Donnell Salvatori Inc. under this contract should get 20% of the profits on anything outside the game that uses the music (which O'Donnell points out is not an especially high royalty rate