Copyright Dispute for Kickstarter Funded Game Homesick

A NoobFeed Top Small Budget Kickstarter Project, Homesick, recently found themselves in the midst of a copyright dispute. The conflict concerns the music on the game’s Kickstarter page, its teaser trailer and other videos.

The small team that makes up Lucky Pause, claim that consent was given for the use of a song, written by Joy Autumn, saying, “Back in January she gave us clear, written permission to use her song, and now nine months later, she is all of a sudden acting like that never happened and accusing us of stealing.”

After emails and discussions between the two parties, it was agreed that the instrumental version of ‘Lullaby’ would be used in the teaser trailer, Kickstarter page and Steam Greenlight page. Lucky Pause says that Autumn was updated on the projects development and credited for her work on YouTube, Kickstarter “and everywhere else that we could.”

Compensation for the use of Autumn’s music was discussed, with Lucky Pause saying, “If she wrote music for the game, we would pay her a percentage of the sales money,” However, it appears that it was agreed that the composer would not receive payment prior to the games release, and that she expected zero reimbursement. “At no point did she ever say that she wanted any compensation for our use of Lullaby, or that we could only use it for the duration of the Kickstarter campaign.”

Towards the beginning of the year, the terms of a contract were discussed and Autumn seemed content, agreeing to the terms. Months later, communication broke down and Lucky Pause had not heard from Autumn. Apologies were exchanged and a new composer was invited to participate in the project. “Then a few weeks later, out of the blue, we get an email and voicemail from Joy, saying we didn’t credit her on Steam, saying she didn’t give us permission to use the song for Steam, and she doesn’t even know when we posted it.”

Lucky Pause has attempted to explain and sort things out with Autumn, however, the composer insists that ‘Lullaby’ was used without permission and Autumn has insisted that the videos be removed. Lucky Pause states: “Then she started demanding that we either pay her or take down all our videos.  And now she filed complaints with Youtube and Kickstarter and others, claiming that the videos contain copyright violations.”

Because of the copyright dispute all videos including Autumn’s work have been removed from YouTube, Steam, Kickstarter and the Homesick official website. Despite this set back, work on Homesick seems to be moving forward. Screenshots of Homesick are published on a semi-regular basis, and the developers recently sought out Kickstarter backers to begin testing the game.

NoobFeed wishes the best for Lucky Pause and continues to have enthusiasm for Homesick!

Megan Bethke (@XboxBetty), NoobFeed.com.