Bungie investigating takedowns of fan and official Destiny YouTube content

Bungie is looking into the erroneous copyright takedowns that have had Destiny content creators on YouTube worried for the security of their channels, the company announced.

While the developer didn’t have explicit details to share on what the issue is, it confirmed that Bungie and its partners aren’t responsible for the copyright claims that have been getting Destiny 2 videos removed sporadically from YouTube. It further explained that Bungie’s own channels had also been hit, and community manager Cozmo said the team was having a meeting today to get to the bottom of the issue.

The first signs of these harsher takedowns came at the beginning of the year when Destiny music archivist Emblyne had a video taken down featuring the soundtrack from the Prophecy dungeon. Bungie has traditionally allowed archival efforts for music that is either no longer in the game or unavailable for purchase, so many speculated on whether there had been a shift in Bungie’s policy. But the issue began to gain more mainstream traction as other Destiny 2 content creators started to get hit and entire channels were purged of content.

Notable community figures such as My Name is Byf and Aztecross had some of their regular videos covering Destiny 2 removed through the same set of copyright takedowns as well. Aztecross was especially baffled at the strike on his video covering that week’s This Week At Bungie blog. “TWAB videos are literally only showing screenshots of This Week at Bungie,” he said on Twitter. “No music of bungies. Literally just screenshots.” Aztecross tweeted an update this morning that the strikes against his channel due to the takedowns had been removed, but other content creators remain uncertain if they will be able to similarly restore their YouTube channels.

Affected content creators lay the blame toward Bungie affiliate CSC, and many of them posted email responses from the contact associated with the takedowns, who informed them that it was up to Bungie to remove the copyright strikes. While it remains unclear who is officially responsible for the ramp-up in takedowns, clarity won’t restore the dozens of YouTube videos and channels that have already been terminated.

It’s an uncertain time in the Destiny 2 content creation space, but the majority of community creators continue to produce videos in the hopes that Bungie will address the issue soon. Community manager dmg04 gave thanks for everyone’s patience and promised that the devs will provide updates as soon as they have more information.