In an apparent case of goodwill gone bad, Aluba Studio will be removing the free soundtrack to their game Cyber Manhunt from Steam on March 1st. The album was released last January as a thank you to supporters of the Early Access title but it has apparently been used without authorization in other media. It’s unclear if the music has been featured in other commercial games or if the team is trying to wrangle its use on streams and monetized videos. Whatever the case, the small team appears to be spending a large amount of time dealing with content claims instead of working on the game. The team’s announcement from February 10th follows.
Thank you so much for your support to the game and my studio over the past year which gives us the strongest power to move on.
At this time last year, in order to thank everyone for the support, we decide to put the Original Soundtrack on Steam FOR FREE to download. The game music has also been well received and both my studio and the music production team are very happy to be recognized.
However, during the year, we found lots of piracies without our authorization, and the safeguard rights was fruitless. As an indie game studio, we hope we can focus on game development instead of spending too much time for safeguard rights.
Therefore, after serious discussion by the team, we regret to inform you that we will remove Original Soundtrack from Steam on March 1st, 2022. As a small studio, we have to focus on game development. We are very sorry if this decision has caused you inconvenience.
If you want to use it in your own title, you can send an email to [email protected]. My studio will give the authorization certificate and specification according to the using way, and provide it FOR FREE.
Thanks again for your support to the game, we will continue to work hard to make the game better!
Aluba Studio
Until March 1st you can still get the soundtrack from the game’s Steam Store page. It falls under the DLC section but the full game is not currently required in order to download the music. After it’s been removed the team should have more control over where it can appear and may then incorporate it into the full version of Cyber Manhunt.
Thanks to everyone who pointed out the unexpected situation this week, I’ve added the date to the Watch List calendar. I can’t track the comings and goings of every piece of DLC but this one serves as another example of the complicated minefield that developers find themselves in, sometimes out of a simple gesture of appreciation.