Twitch Struggling

During the past few months, Twitch streamers have been facing DMCA takedown strikes on the platform where streamers receive DMCA strikes because of playing any music featuring well-known soundtracks that artists aren’t getting their fair share of. This has caused some streamers to delete their past hours of VOD’s and clips just to not get any DMCA strikes that will lead to a permanent ban.

It seems like it is getting worse and worse, with some Twitch streamers beginning to report that DMCA strikes are being issued also for sound effects within video games that they’re streaming. An example of this was a Twitch streamer who posted out on Twitter saying that he got a copyright claim when he was just playing Hitman: Blood money and it said that it was because of the bird and insect noises in A Vintage Year.

Some strikes are coming allegedly from sounds that sound similar to copyrighted pieces. Streamer HCJustin, working through Phasmophobia, received a DMCA strike because he was whispering as he posted out on twitter; “It’s very cool that I had a VOD get muted during Phasmophobia, no music or anything playing, but I guess us whispering at a ghost sounded a lot like some meditation spoken word album lmao. This rocks”! It seems like Twitch needs to figure out the apparently over-aggressive DMCA algorithm.