13
votes
Remedy is set to update its original version of Alan Wake on PC – David Bowie's Space Oddity will be removed from the credits due to changes in licensing
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- Title
- Upcoming Alan Wake update will torch David Bowie's Space Oddity from credits
- Published
- Sep 6 2024
- Word count
- 265 words
I'm not sure how I feel about this. As a Bowie fan, I've heard Space Oddity many, many times already, and I don't think I'll be buying the game anyway, so it probably won't make any difference to me.
On the other hand, why should anyone be able to make demands on the use of a dead artist's works? Publishing rights I can understand, since publishing requires some amount of outlay to accomplish, and I'd very much prefer that someone has an incentive to continue publishing my favorite artist's works.
But this sort of thing veers awfully close to something I might call "fair use." They may not be materially changing the work itself, but its context in the game certainly brings some amount of transformation. And it isn't as though people are going to be playing the Alan Wake Remaster's credits just to get a taste of a Bowie song from 55 years ago anyway, so it's not going to appreciably eat into demand on the publishing side.
Which makes me think that somebody is squatting on the rights to a dead genius's IP, and is trying to profit from his cultural relevance. They've already made the agreement once, which means someone along the line decided this particular use doesn't debase the intellectual property–presumably with Bowie's blessing, since he was still kicking when that deal was struck.
This is all the more gross because of this particular song's place in the zeitgeist. The song was released in July of 1969 in order to capitalize on the Apollo 11 mission, which took place less than a week later. The BBC used it as bumper music in their coverage of the moon landing. If any Bowie song belongs to world culture, it's probably this one. But nope. Gotta make those ducats.
I get that artists have a tough time making a living, but this isn't that. David Jones is beyond needing to make a living off his work any longer. Like I said, this particular use isn't any kind of earthshaking and is unlikely to compromise the integrity of the game, but God damn, it sure is depressing being reminded just how fucked copyright is these days.