Twitch Replaces Metallica at BlizzConline to Avoid DMCA

As part of BlizzConline's opening ceremony on Friday, Blizzard Entertainment had the popular rock band Metallica play live music. Broadly speaking, this seems to have gone off without a hitch, except on the official Twitch Gaming channel where the sound was quickly replaced with something completely different in what appears to have been an attempt to avoid a DMCA takedown that is ultimately very, very funny.

Notably, the opening ceremony concert appears to have gone through just fine on other official channels, including Blizzard's own. For whatever reason, it seems that the Twitch Gaming channel itself may not have had the rights to the performance and thus erred on the side of caution by replacing the music with some kind of folksy instrumental music rather than Metallica playing.

the current state of Twitch: the official Twitch Gaming channel cut off the live Metallica concert to play 8bit folk music to avoid DMCA pic.twitter.com/sCn56So8Ee

— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) February 19, 2021

While the replacement is, on its face, extremely hilarious, DMCA takedowns have become a serious issue on the livestreaming platform over the last year. If you are somehow not familiar, DMCA takedowns result from someone being caught playing something (almost universally music) that they do not have the rights to, and while this has been a potential source of headaches for years and years, Twitch DMCA takedowns have dramatically increased over the last year.

BlizzConline, which began Friday and concluded yesterday, was Blizzard Entertainment's virtual annual event, and as usual, it included a number of different announcements about upcoming video games like Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV. You can check out all of our previous coverage of BlizzConline right here.

What do you think of Twitch's unique approach to this sticky rights issue? Did you watch it happen on the stream live? Let us know in the comments, or feel free to reach out and hit me up directly over on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk about all things gaming!

[H/T Eurogamer]