It’s been a decade or so since one of the silliest ways to combat the symptom of a broken copyright system came to be: safe streaming settings in video games. Because of the way licensing works for the musical compositions in video games, and because some games include mainstream music a la Grand Theft Auto, special settings have to be put in the menu of these games that prevent copyrighted music from being played while game-streamers do their thing. The whole thing is quite silly, since there can’t possibly be anyone at all that believes that listening to a let’s play video game stream that includes copyrighted music somehow replaces anyone’s impetus to buy that music elsewhere. It’s just part of the game that comes along for the ride.
But like I said, it’s been a decade of this, and apparently there are enough of us that are cool with the status quo, since EA just updated The Sims 4 with this same safe to stream setting. Notably, this is a game that came out ten years ago and just got this setting.
If you go into the the Music section of Game Options, you’ll now see a “Safe for Steaming” toggle that allows you to play only the music that’s safe for streaming.
TikToker @jeremy_gonewild explains the update thusly: “This blocks copyrighted music from playing on your Sims radio when they listen to the radio.”
But, Jeremy cautions, “This isn’t about build mode music, or the Create-A-Sim music, that stuff is fine. This is preventing a Simlish version of Last Friday Night by Katy Perry from coming on your Sims radio while you’re livestreaming, earning you a copyright strike.”
The game allows for this kind of music to be played in game, but the moment it’s done as part of a let’s play stream it suddenly becomes a problem. And while that’s all technically true as a matter of current copyright laws, what is most useful in this for our purposes is to highlight how absurd this all is. If a streamer of this game happens to have some copyrighted music playing in the background… who gets harmed? Is a musician really losing a sale due to a video game stream? Are viewers of the stream going to refuse to listen to the song on some other streaming service?
Or is it actually more likely that some music will be discovered by a new generation via video game streams like this? Especially because these “simlish” versions of mainstream songs that were introduced into the game were done so with the expressed purpose of promoting the artists and giving them more visibility.
you’ll notice quite a difference between songs that are copyright approved. You’ll notice all of the in-game original Sims music—including those composed by Mark Mothersbaugh—are free to use in streaming mode.
While your sims won’t be having a Brat Summer during a live stream anytime soon, you’ll no need to worry about your Sims live stream being rudely interrupted because of the man!
Cute, but ultimately not all that funny. It’s just too bad we have to navigate this sort of thing with workarounds rather than creating a more sane copyright system.
