WePlay! Withdraws Illegal DMCA Takedown Issued Against Brazillian Caster

WePlay! Withdraws Illegal DMCA Takedown Issued Against Brazillian Caster

Vignesh Raghuram
Published On: 
  • WePlay! issued an illegal DMCA strike against a Brazillian Caster after he was spotted broadcasting WePlay! Pushka League games through DotaTV.
  • The Brazillian Caster was in the right according to Valve's Broadcasting guidelines.
  • After falsely claiming that the DMCA strike wasn't illegal earlier this week, WePlay! withdrew its DMCA strike earlier yesterday.

Recently, the CIS tournament organizers WePlay! came under a lot of fire after they issued a DMCA against a Brazillian Caster, ColdFox who was broadcasting the tournament. The tournament organizers lost a lot of good-will they’ve gained with their successful recent tournaments.

Now it looks like they’ve withdrawn the illegal DMCA it had issued against this streamer, which solidifies the fact that this was a poor decision from the WePlay! Management.

DMCA Takedown against Brazillian Caster Coldfox

Earlier this week, Brazilian Streamer ColdFox went on Reddit and complained about the organizers of WePlay! Pushka League.

According to him, he was streaming WePlay! Pushka League using DotaTV, without using overlays, observers and commentary of WePlay! Studios, according to Valve guidelines. Despite this, he received a DMCA complaint on YouTube channel. According to him, the only advertisement that played on stream was the one that plays before a viewer can actually watch the stream.

WePlay responded by saying that they were within their rights to issue this DMCA strike considering the fact that the tournament was an object of intellectual property of WePlay! Esports.

This, of course, contradicts the broadcasting guidelines that Valve issued in 2017 which made it clear that anyone can broadcast tournaments from DotaTV as long as they turn off advertising/branding overlays, and have no sponsorships.

After the community uproar following WePlay!’s response, the organizer has finally withdrawn the DMCA, after 2 days.

This situation is just a mess. On one hand, you have WePlay! who issued an illegal DMCA notice against a streamer. This is just wrong on the tournament organizers’ part, considering the fact that they don’t have the authority to do that.

The sad part is that we can understand why WePlay! chose to issue the takedown. The fact that someone with no monetary investment is benefiting from the tournament you put up(with all the risks, prize pools and production costs) has to be infuriating.

Unless Valve considers exclusive tournament broadcasting rights, there is just no other solution in sight.


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Vignesh has been covering the esports industry for nearly 5 years starting with the early days of the DPC. His industry expertise includes experience in Dota 2, CS:GO and Mobile Esports coverage.

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