'Quantum Break' has an audio setting just for streamers
Turning off licensed music should side-step any copyright infringements from broadcasting the game.
YouTube and Twitch have come under fire for overzealous blocking of copyrighted music in video games, but Quantum Break developer Remedy Entertainment has a way around that. For folks who want to stream its latest game and not get their videos flagged for violations on YouTube, or have the audio muted wholesale on Twitch, there's a setting in the game's audio options that allows you to turn off licensed music playback. This is something that's been done on the indie scale before, but perhaps not in a AAA tentpole game like Quantum Break and not one published by Microsoft.
It's something that came after the studio got a lot of fan feedback that their Let's Play videos of the team's previous game, Alan Wake, resulted in the clips being pulled from YouTube. "Streaming and YouTube especially have become such an essential part of gaming culture these days," Remedy's Head of Media and Partners Thomas Puha told Engadget via email. "At a very late stage in the development of Quantum Break, we came up with the idea of giving the option to disable licensed music to make life a bit easier for everyone wanting to share their Quantum Break experience."
Handy! But really, before you toggle that option and go live on YouTube or Twitch, maybe play through the game with the licensed music turned on. Each song that plays at the end of an act was deliberately chosen by creative director (and literal face of Max Payne) Sam Lake, and can foreshadow events in the game, or act as a theme for what you saw before the credits rolled. Be it The Black Keys or Nick Cave, the music is there for a pretty specific reason.
One of the biggest games of this season, from one of the biggest companies on the planet, actively supporting streaming? Don't be surprised if we see more of this soon.
