Ubisoft Teams Up With Joseph Gordon-Levitt's HitRecord to Create the Music for Watch Dogs: Legion

HitRecord is working with Ubisoft again. After cooperating with Beyond Good and Evil 2 the crowdsourcing musical source will now work with Ubisoft for Watch Dogs: Legion's soundtrack.

HitRecord will provide a combination of metal, punk, electronic, rock and other musical scores related to London. Contributors create different tracks and those chosen by HitRecord are paid $2,000 and split between those involved in its creation based on how much work they contributed.. In addition, they will be featured in the Watch Dogs: Legion credits. However, not everyone is happy about this choice. With many vexed with the deal.

Many are explaining this is a form of a hashtag #nospec which means "no speculative work". The American Institute of Graphic Arts describes “spec work” as “work done for free in the hopes of getting paid for it” or “work done in the hope of winning a prize, in whatever form that might take".

Several notorious creators also voiced their issue with this deal.

“This sucks. Pay people for their labour,” said Mike Bithell, developer of John Wick Hex. “Stop exploiting fans and hobbyists, while devaluing the work of those with the gall to actually expect consistent payment for work done. Do better Ubi, we're counting on you. #nospec. Suggested better approach: Do an open call for submissions of existing work from aspiring musicians. Invest in a proper review process. Commission those whose work fits and pay them to produce work, you know, like you would with any other worker.”

Rami Ismail, co-creator of indie studio Vlambeer, said “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”.

In addition, developers such as Mike Bithell is calling this competition exploitive. Stating it's abusing fans for free labor to which Ubisoft responded on Twitter.

On our partnership with HITRECORD. You can find more info here: https://t.co/QNQv5sjm1R. pic.twitter.com/1k5ugm2gvq

— Watch Dogs: Legion (@watchdogsgame) July 15, 2019

For YouTubers, this is going to be nightmarish. Ubisoft has included options in past games, such as Far Cry: New Dawn, where the player can turn off licensed soundtracks to avoid these copyright claims. But, speaking from experience, it isn't enough and it just takes one note to get claimed.

Watch Dogs: Legion launches on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Google Stadia, and PC on March 6, 2020. I had the chance to try Watch Dogs: Legion at E3 2019 and said "Watch Dogs Legion is another step forward, providing you with hundreds of characters to play as and multiple avenues to complete your objective."

Adam Siddiqui, NoobFeed
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