Square Enix ‘demands Patreon remove leaked Tomb Raider script’
Crystal Dynamics has filed a DMCA request via Patreon to Last Stand Media after hosts on one of its podcasts read out a script which is reportedly being used to cast actors for the next Tomb Raider game.
The script,which was widely reported on, was featured in an episode of the Sacred Symbols podcast. According to host Colin Moriarty, he was contacted by Patreon and asked to remove the offending material, or risk being suspended from the platform.
According to Moriarty, the DMCA came via Square Enix. The Japanese publisherhas agreed to sell Crystal Dynamics and the Tomb Raider IP to Embracer, but the completion of the deal is still subject to various regulatory and other external approvals.
“They DMCA’d Patreon, to have them ask us to take down the offending audio of us talking about the new Tomb Raider game,” Colin said in avideo discussing the situation.
Interestingly, at the time of writing, no other platform has received a DMCA claim.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a federal law that was introduced in 1998 to deal with the advancements in technology allowing for more avenues of piracy in the internet age.
It essentially protects platforms such as YouTube and Patreon, by allowing them to be safe from legal action, should a user upload copyrighted content.
“I was acting in the notion that this is fair use, this is general interest, this is of huge general interest, I didn’t break into Crystal Dynamics to steal it,” Colin said.
Fair Use is a protection from the DMCA which allows the use of copyrighted content in very specific contexts, usually with the requirement being some kind of transformative take on the material (e.g. using clips of a game in the context of a review).
“Chris’ reading of it is insane,
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