Square Enix Appears To Be Using The DMCA Takedown Process To Silence Criticism
We’ve talked plenty about the ways that the DMCA process specifically is wide open for fraud and abuse. There are plenty of forms this sort of thing can take, of course, but one of the more troubling among them is the use of the DMCA process specifically to disappear critical commentary that a copyright holder doesn’t like. Typically you see this sort of thing activated in a way that at least straddles the line of what copyright law actually allows. For instance, you might have a copyright holder that is generally okay with some uses of their work online, but then turns to the DMCA process when those uses come along with criticism. A selective enforcement of copyright law based on undesired commentary, in other words.
But all of that nuance in approach appears to have gone out the window when it comes to how Square Enix is using the DMCA process to take down commentary on a Reddit thread dedicated to the Life is Strange franchise.
The subreddit r/pricefield is a community dedicated to the Life Is Strange franchise, primarily shipping the lead character of Max with her love interest Chloe from the first game. It has 12,000 members, many of whom have engaged in discussions critical of the decision to omit Chloe from Double Exposure. The subreddit is an independent space for Life is Strange fans to talk fan theories, share fan art and discuss the games, and is wholly unaffiliated from Square Enix. These fans noticed that more and more of their posts and comments were being taken down by Reddit, after a third party began issuing copyright violations.
In response, and fearing that they risked further penalties from Reddit, moderators of the subreddit published an open letter to Square Enix, stating that they believe someone at the company, or developer Deck Nine, was ‘wilfully removing non-infringing content for reasons other than infringement’. They believe this is happening because Square Enix is unhappy with not having editorial control over the page.
The open letter is long and detailed and worth a read on its own. However, some of the very specific allegations of how Square is abusing the DMCA process is detailed in links within it. The context here is that Square has also issued takedowns before and after the release of Life is Strange: Double Exposure for leaked and spoiler content. I still think that’s stupid, but that’s the sort of line-straddling to which I referred above.
But if you actually dig into what else the company is issuing takedowns over, some of it is supposedly purely publicly available information and the commentary around it.
I haven’t posted cause for my mental health and cause the main sub banned me over some small shit, but tell me how a certain third party submitted a takedown notice for me. I got one of these before for sharing leaks, which was valid, then I removed all my main posts talking about leaks.
But the topic they want me to take down is just a recap of dev comments????
This isn’t leaked content, this isn’t shit from DE, this is THEIR COMMENTS TO THE PLAYERBASE I can’t see the images now so I don’t remember what I shared for the dev comments, but since when were publicly made comments eligible for takedown notices???? I didn’t include a leak or shit from the actual game, did I????
Even if some small amount of game content was included in this post, it would have been used in support of the commentary wrapped around it. You know, fair use. And whatever is going on here, it isn’t happening in a vacuum. Square has a well-documented history of shutting down fan content, sometimes doing so in a nearly sadistic way, and it even has a history of taking punitive action based on reviews and commentary for its games that it doesn’t like. In other words, this sort of activity tracks with Square’s general behavior towards its fans.
Now, there are punishments for bad-faith DMCA takedowns, but they are rarely invoked. And it sure would be nice if platforms like Reddit both dug into whether content like this is actually infringing as well as provided a more detailed notice to the person having content taken down to detail out what was actually considered copyright infringement.
But what we know for sure is that Square Enix has such heartburn over critiques of its games that it is willing to use the DMCA takedown process to try to silence it. And whatever else that may be, it certainly is shitty.