Last week, Blizzard re-released and remastered three of its lesser-known classics as part of the Blizzard Arcade Collection. But before you go wowing Twitch with your latent Rock N' Roll Racing skills, the studio has some unfortunate news.
This weekend, community manager Adam Fletcher explained that considering the game's licensed soundtrack (which includes hits from Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Steppenwolf) is likely to get you flagged by streaming services. If you want to avoid getting in trouble, you're gonna have to take the rock out of Rock N' Roll Racing.
PSA: If you stream Rock N Roll Racing from the Blizzard Arcade Collection, the game has a soundtrack of licensed music which is not cleared for streaming.If you choose to stream, please do so with the music turned off.February 20, 2021
In a follow-up, Fletcher confirms that even the MIDI versions of these songs are potentially unsafe for listening on stream. It's not surprising that Blizzard would urge caution, either. In the tail of of 2020, Twitch became increasingly twitchy over licensed music, leading to a number of rhythm game streamers playing their games in silence as an act of protest.
Blizzard itself stumbled into Twitch's audio crosshairs during last week's BlizzCon. Granted, there's a fun irony in the studio's Metallica session having its audio replaced with cheery chiptunes by Twitch Gaming considering the band's history of zealously pursuing copyright actions.
But it does speak to how untenable the situation around audio streaming has become, if even major corporations are having to tread carefully around Twitch's detection systems. For the time being, unless you fancy trying to outrun copyright algorithms, you'd best keep the Rock N' Roll Racing to yourself.
