Heaven 17 v Rockstar: are games being fair to music artists? | Games

The 1983 song Temptation by Heaven 17 is an undisputed classic of the synth pop era, a glacial paean to sexual tension denied the number No 1 spot only by the sheer might of True by Spandau Ballet. So how much should it be worth to a video game publisher in 2024? That’s the question many asked when Heaven 17’s Martyn Ware recently tweeted about a licensing offer from Rockstar to use the track in Grand Theft Auto VI. “IT WAS $7500 [£5,600] – for a buyout of any future royalties from the game – forever,” he typed. “To put this in context, Grand Theft Auto 6 [sic] grossed, wait for it… $8.6 BILLION. Ah, but think of the exposure… Go fuck yourself.”

The thread went viral and Ware was inundated with reactions, ranging from support to bewildered chastisement. Ware later clarified that the figure he gave was his share of a $22,500 payment to the whole band; industry experts waded in pointing out that the record label would also need to be paid, bringing the total offer up to a possible $45,000. Would that be fair for a song that may just feature on the GTA radio stations? GTA V featured 240 tracks on release and now has more than 400. As one industry insider told me about the Heaven 17 offer, “you multiply that by a few hundred and you’ve got the biggest ever music budget for a video game.”

But then, pop music can have a huge impact. Remember the Grand Theft Auto Vice City TV commercial which brilliantly used the Flock of Seagulls track I Ran? It established the essence of the entire game. In this context, $22,500 to the creators of one of the defining tracks of the 1980s seems like a steal.

It wasn’t always like this. Music licensing really took off in video games in the 1990s when CD-Rom technology allowed developers to include entire original tracks within their games, giving them a valuable connection with wider pop culture. Over the next 20 years, licensed music became an intrinsic element of game design, from the PlayStation classic WipEout to long-running franchises such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Guitar Hero and Grand Theft Auto, which have featured hundreds of songs. It was once a lucrative realm – Sony had a royalties deal with artists in the 1990s so if their tracks were featured in a game they got a cut of the profits. Artists who contributed tracks to the hugely successful racing game Gran Turismo ended up making high six-figure sums. Northern Irish rock band Ash have credited their GT royalties with keeping them going when their second album dived.

Now however, most games publishers have abandoned royalties in favour of one-time payments named buy-outs. But such licensing – or “syncing” – deals are notoriously complex. If a games company wants a particular track, it needs to pay for both the publishing rights (the words and music of the song) and the recording rights of the particular version being used. This negotiation needs to involve the record label, the artists and any other songwriters who contributed. Also, rights deals tend to be for a specific use and a specific period of time, say one to three years, so if a title is later updated or rereleased, the rights have to be renegotiated – a key concern in this era of live service games and lucrative remasters.

In the aftermath of Ware’s Twitter tirade many suggested that the fee was fair if the rights had been specifically to put the track on the GTA radio player. But Ware told us this wasn’t the case. “I’ve read the agreement – it didn’t mention whether it was on a game radio station or not … And it’s not just for use in the game. It relates to all forms of advertising, also on the internet, anything related to the game – cinema ads, TV ads – they wouldn’t pay anything extra for anything. Usually when someone asks for a sync licence it’s for a very specific use. So if you wanted to use it for cinema ads, that’s another set of fees, another negotiation. I’m not saying Rockstar would have done, but they had the right to do it, forever, with no further payments. It’s just wrong.”

But then, we also have to consider the huge cost of making Triple A games in the 2020s. Simply looking at revenue figures for the biggest titles doesn’t tell the entire financial story. “Licensing is complicated,” says one industry veteran who asked to remain anonymous, “especially at a time when games aren’t selling enough to pay the salaries of the developers. When people are being laid off, are you going to be paying to license more music? Or are you going to be using library music or in-house musicians?”

This is a point the music industry recognises. “We have to acknowledge that making games is an expensive business,” says Tim Miles, SVP of Global Sync at Warner Music Group. “And often the song is one part of a huge game – it’s not like movies where you could have a big needle drop in the end scene and everyone remembers the track – in gaming it might make up 0.05 % of the game – we have to be fair and pragmatic.”

So, does getting a song into a game actually matter any more? Even if players hear and enjoy a track, they’re most likely to simply listen to it on Spotify, where as Ware pointed out in his tweets, he’d make about $1,000 for every million listens. “There were people saying we should be thankful just for being part of such a culturally significant game. Heaven 17 has been around since 1981, we’re internationally known, Temptation is our biggest song, it’s been a Top 5 hit twice in the British charts when that actually meant something.”

For new artists however, the value is in discovery. “The music consumption space is noisy, there’s a lot of stuff out there,” says Miles. “A game soundtrack offers a cut through, it gets the track talked about.”

This is definitely in the minds of video game music supervisors, the people who select and sync tracks for games. “Video games have become what radio and MTV were to prior generations: the number one destination to discover new artists and songs,” says Steve Schnur, president of music for Electronic Arts. His sync team spends a whole year sourcing the music for each of its Fifa and EA Sports FC game soundtracks. “With 200 million players and 9bn hours played and watched this past year, it’s understood by labels, publishers, artists, gamers, sports leagues and music fans alike that EA Sports FC can create a soundtrack with unprecedented global impact.”.

Schnur says his team has relationships with labels, managers and artists around the world and seeks to break new artists. When the Last Dinner Party announced the inclusion of their breakthrough song Nothing Matters on the EA Sports FC 24 soundtrack, their TikTok video went viral, attracting a new audience of gamers to the song. And by accentuating the international flavour of the game within the soundtrack it has allowed them to bring global audiences to new acts. “We have the opportunity to cross international borders, embrace multiple genres and showcase a remarkable number of breakthrough and established artists representing 25+ different nations. Because if you loved the Last Dinner Party on EA Sports FC 24, we think you’ll also love Balu Brigada, Moonchild Sanelly, Mata and Angélica Garcia.”

But right now what the sector needs is innovation. Not all games companies have the facilities that EA has to reach out to record labels then have the legal and financial resources to broker complex deals. “The music licensing process in games will ultimately need to become more streamlined to keep pace with the evolving industry,” says Sara Al Hamad​​​​ from music law firm, Wiggin. “The future of music licensing in games is about having a range of licensing pathways to enhance the experience of every gamer, whether they’re a music superfan or a casual player who wants better background music.”

Warner and other labels are now looking at ways to make licensing frictionless, creating libraries of tracks that have been pre-cleared for use in games, TV and films and offering them at transparent rates with no need for costly legal negotiations. New platforms are emerging to support this concept. Launching in early 2025, Catalog is a platform devised by music supervision company Too Young offering a curated selection of sync-ready tracks to the games, film and advertising industries, and it’s supported by more than 20 labels including Ninja Tune, City Slang and Beggars.

“Gaming has undoubtedly become a powerful force in music discovery and promotion,” says founder Frederic Schindler. “The massive, global and highly engaged audience creates a unique opportunity for artists to connect with new fans and promote their music. What gaming and film and TV have in common as discovery experiences is human curation, which is drastically missing in the ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet strategy Spotify engages. The approach we took with Catalog is like the one you will have in a boutique record shop you trust: every single record we have in the inventory has been selected because we believe it has an artistic value, and is worth the audience’s attention. Sync needs to urgently streamline its process to ensure that as much outstanding music as possible is utilised in visual media.”

There are also growing opportunities for closer collaborations between musicians and game makers, such as the gorgeous 65 Days of Static soundtrack for No Man’s Sky, or Sea Power’s haunting score for Disco Elysium. “What we’re heading towards, is being more open-minded and progressive,” says Miles. “We’re knocking on the doors of gaming and film companies to say, hey, we’re here, we’re open for business, what are you working on? We’ve had some real success stories with that – we put Stormzy in Watch Dogs, that really came from getting to know Ubisoft and working out their priorities, aligning on Stormzy, getting him on board, getting him around the table creatively and moulding that with him as a partner.”

What’s clear is that the games industry must treat artists fairly and with respect. Licensed tracks add meaning, nostalgia and cultural weight to a game in a way few other resources do. Meanwhile record labels need to simplify the licensing process and work to make their artists available. There are so many possibilities to explore: younger artists who have grown up playing video games see the medium as another outlet for artistic expression rather than somewhere to sell sync rights to. As Miles says: “We have artists signing to the label now and you think that they’re going to be concerned with producing that first hit song that’s going to be No 1 on the charts. But actually in the first breath they talk about gaming – I think that’s exciting.”

For his part, Ware is unrepentant about his rejection of the Rockstar deal but is keen to point out that he sees the appeal and potential of games and music. “I used to play video games with my children,” he says. “Rock Band, all those things, that’s where they discovered a lot of different styles of music, especially heavy metal and 1980s stuff. What I realised was any music involved in a game was deemed to be cool – it didn’t matter when the record was made – if it was in a game it was cool. I think that’s great. If someone came to us and wanted us to write a soundtrack for a game we’d be all over it.”