Bungie Sues Over Destiny 2 YouTube Video Takedowns That It Didn't Request

Several Destiny 2 YouTubers--and Bungie itself--were hit with copyright takedown notices earlier this month, targeting videos that analyzed and discussed the game. Bungie explained that fake Google accounts impersonating it were responsible, with those bad actors abusing YouTube's copyright takedown system to target high-profile creators and the studio. Not content with just putting a stop to the takedown spree, Bungie is now going after the alleged culprits and plans to sue them.

According to a new lawsuit filed on March 25 and spotted by TorrentFreak, Bungie has identified up to 10 people who are allegedly responsible for using fraudulent DMCA takedown which disrupted Bungie's player community and streamers and caused Bungie itself "nearly incalculable damage."

Bungie is currently subpoenaing information so that it can uncover the identities of the people responsible. In a stranger turn, one of the people allegedly responsible for the takedowns emailed an affected account, placing the blame on YouTube for its criticized copyright takedown system and on Bungie for ignoring any potential issues according to Kotaku. In its lawsuit, Bungie added that YouTube's system was easy to manipulate and challenging to contest.

The company was met with out-of-office responses when it contacted a representative for its YouTube account and Google’s Head of Games Publishers on March 19, with the issues only being rectified on March 22.

"Bungie had to devote significant internal resources to addressing it and helping its players restore their videos and channels--an effort complicated by the fact that while YouTube has a form that allows anyone to claim to represent a copyright holder and issue copyright strikes, it has no dedicated mechanism for copyright holders who are being impersonated to let YouTube know about the DMCA fraud," the studio's lawsuit reads. "As detailed below, this meant that Bungie had to work through several layers of YouTube contacts before it could adequately communicate and begin addressing the problem."

When it comes to user-generated content around Destiny 2, Bungie has generous guidelines for what the community can do. If a video has at least 20% of the content within created by the player, then Bungie has no problem with them being uploaded and monetized. Copyright strikes can severely impact those creators who make a living from producing Destiny content as Google will permanently remove a channel from YouTube if it gets three strikes within 90 days.