Over the last few hours, a brand new controversy has landed on the Internet. Ubisoft is extending its partnership with HitRecord, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s production company that aims at giving artists more visibility and chances to get into significant entertainment works, announced earlier today.
Ubisoft and HitRecord have been working together on Beyond Good & Evil 2 for a while now, but they’re doing the same work on Watch Dogs Legion. Legion debuts much sooner as the game releases on March 6, 2020, on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
One of the issues regarding the partnership is the meager budget at its disposal, with it being $2,000 per song with a total of 10 songs included in the game. How it works out for the artists: they do all the work, and then someone chooses the pieces they’re interested in, and the artists receive a portion of the total based on the amount of the song Ubisoft uses.
The entire process has sparked a lot of criticism on Twitter, where the hashtag #nospec (meaning ‘no speculative work,’ usually intended as ‘work done for free in the hopes of getting paid for it’) has started trending. Some major indie developers, as found by IGN, have discussed the matter with harsh words in regards to the operation.
“This sucks. Pay people for their labor,” said Thomas Was Alone‘s Mike Bithell. “Stop exploiting fans and hobbyists, while devaluing the work of those with the gall actually to expect consistent payment for work done. Do better Ubi; we’re counting on you.”
“I am still not a fan of what read as ‘spec work under a proprietary open, non-exclusive license’ model, & prefer the “pay someone to browse SoundCloud to find cool music for which you then talk to the creator & pay them too,” added Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail.
The matter is very delicate here. Considering it is not the first time this has sparked such controversy; it could be the case for Ubisoft to start looking into it before it gets something bigger. At the time being there has been no comment from representatives at Ubisoft.
