Bungie's attempt to dismiss the Destiny 2 copyright case using YouTube videos describing 'vaulted' elements of the game has been shut down by a judge who is not going to sit through a 10-hour lore explainer
In October of 2024 science-fiction writer Matthew Kelsey Martineau accused Bungie of lifting ideas for its first Destiny 2 campaign from a story published on his blog under the pseudonym Caspar Cole. While some of the ideas in question are fairly generic sci-fi elements, like consciousness transfer and the use of emergency failsafes to prevent disasters, both storylines involve groups called the "Red Legion" who use flamethrowers and trained hounds of war. It's entirely possible that's a coincidence, but Bungie is struggling to prove it since all the relevant parts of Destiny 2 are now unplayable and tucked away in the 'vault'.
Among the many problems with live-service games is the way they eat themselves, rendering parts of the game inaccessible when they're overwritten by new material, made redundant, or just trimmed to get the install size down. In the case of Destiny 2, that began when the Beyond Light expansion launched and the original Red War campaign as well as its two follow-ups were put in the 'Destiny 2 Content Vault'. New players would never get to be baffled by them, and would instead have to settle for being baffled by whatever Bungie put in their place.
While Bungie's always maintained that old Destiny 2 material is just sitting in the vault for now, when the lawsuit was filed it suddenly turned out that material in the vault couldn't be restored. The engine had been updated, and it simply wasn't possible to restore the Red War. Instead, Bungie insisted "the attached videos are the best possible way for the Court to review the accused work." The videos in question included, as Exhibit B, a 10-hour lore video put together by YouTuber MynameisByf.
Exhibit C is a cutscene compilation, again put together by a fan, that's a mere two hours and 40 minutes long. As The Game Post reports, Judge Susie Morgan does not have time for that nonsense. When Bungie filed a motion to dismiss the case using only citations from the Destinypedia fan wiki and ridiculously long YouTube videos, the judge disregarded it.
"The Court will not consider the exhibits attached to Defendant's motion to dismiss and will not convert the Defendant's motion to dismiss to a motion for summary judgment," the decision went. "There has not been sufficient time for discovery, and the attachments are admittedly of third-party origination. Their authenticity has not been established."
Which means the copyright infringement court case is going ahead after all. It sure would be nice if this served as some kind of warning that sunsetting huge chunks of videogames just to keep the treadmill grinding on isn't worthwhile, but given how much money the companies at the pointy end of the live-service war are making out of them I wouldn't hold your breath.
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