Today marked the opening ceremonies for BlizzCon, the annual event where Blizzard Entertainment fans – they Diablo, Starcraft, World Of Warcraft, Hearthstoneand more – get together to celebrate the company’s games, and get glimpses of all the next new things. And despite being completely online this year – or “BlizzConline”, as it was awkwardly portmanteau – the event still had some important revelations todayincluding news that fan favorite Diablo II is being remastered and relaunched later this year. What BlizzCon 2021 was not, however, it was hilarious – at least, not until Metallica took the stage.
In any other year, one of the biggest daddy rock bands in the world hanging out with the collective orcs of the Blizzard fan base would be just another moment of creating hype for BlizzCon participants. This year, however, the opening ceremonies were broadcast online, both through the official BlizzCon, YouTube and Twitch website. And you know what happens when a licensed song is played on the internet, don’t you, guys? That’s right: copyright issues!
Per Uproxx, James audio, Lars and the boys’ performance apparently went out as usual on YouTube and on the BlizzCon page – although the whole thing seems to have been cut from uploading the event on YouTube. But on Twitch … On Twitch, things didn’t go so well. Which means that, although it was hosted on the company’s official twitchgaming channel, the performance was threatening preceded by a chyron noting that “The next musical performance is subject to copyright protection by the applicable copyright holder.” And then this happened:
(You can see for yourself at The event broadcast on Twitch; Metallica material starts at approximately the 1:10:00 mark.)
And, look: we can to test that someone on Twitch intentionally chose the stupidest, most Zelda forest donkey music imaginable to make Metallica sway their little hearts, instead of transmitting its extremely copyrighted song (oneand therefore, having to deal with the possibility of issuing one of its ubiquitous DMCA removal notices for themselves)? Obviously not, just as we cannot show definitive evidence that Twitch then changed to, like, “lo-fi beats to publicly thrash to”To end the set. It is entirely possible that this was just, you know, the copyright-free audio that Twitch had in hand, that they simply chose to dub one of the most popular rock bands of all time. On the other hand, we can I prove that it is extremely funny to see this happen, especially – as many people have pointed out – since Metallica is at least partially responsible for the restrictive character of many online music streaming laws that dominate the internet today, after your high profile campaign against Napster at the beginning of MP3.