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Square Enix's brand new RPG, Forspoken, is to be released on January 24, 2023, and streamers worldwide have been looking forward to trying it out on their streams. However, one creator from New Zealand by the moniker Gtamen has been handed a two-day ban by Twitch after a copyright strike.
The YouTuber has claimed that the game was legally out in his country when he streamed it on Twitch, that is January 24. Meaning that the copyright strike, which is still in effect at the time of writing, would be entirely unfair. Here's a screenshot of the blurb that pops out when trying to access his channel.
Twitch streamer Gtamen claims ban unfair after Square Enix copyright strikes channel for playing Forspoken "that's been officially released"
As the name implies, Gtamen is primarily a GTA V content creator, having streamed the game for a whopping 4.2K hours on stream. However, fans also know him for playing a variety of other games, including Red Dead Redemption 2, Fortnite, and Call of Duty Warzone. He recently played Pokemon, Callisto Protocol, and older GTA titles on his Twitch channel.
Naturally, he was one of the many creators looking forward to playing Forspoken, the brand new action-RPG game from the popular publisher Square Enix, known for their Final Fantasy franchise.
However, when he started streaming it, he was promptly handed a copyright strike with a 48-hour ban, according to the tweet, which he sarcastically captioned:
"Banned for 48hrs for streaming a game that's been officially released and legally bought. Cool."
In the tweet, Gtamen shared a screengrab of the message that was sent to him after the ban, which confirms that the suspension indeed came from Luminous Productions Co, the developers behind Forspoken, and a subsidiary of Square Enix.
The reason given is that the game was not released and was apparently under embargo. Here is the relevant part of the mail:
"Copyrighted work: Forspoken (unreleased video game under embargo)"
From previous bans handed out by Twitch, it is clear that the decision is not solely on their behalf. The fact is that the streamer is from New Zealand, which has one of the earliest time zones on the globe. This means that while it was January 24 for Gtamen, most of the world was still a day behind. This might be a plausible reason for the ban.
This confusion was shared by some of the replies to the tweet, with one claiming that it was a premature stream, followed by Gtamen reiterating the date.
Twitter reacts to Gtamen getting a 48-hour ban for "breaking" embargo
The post from the streamer sparked quite some reactions, with some claiming that the ban was legitimate, considering the embargo on Forspoken ends at 2 pm GMT on January 23. Meaning Gtamen technically did break the stipulations, however, he did retort by claiming that the game had been unlocked by the store and should, therefore, not be subject to the embargo.
Here are some more reactions:
Forspoken might not have gotten the warm welcome many expected, but it certainly has its charms. Read our Expert Columnist Jason Parker's review of the game before getting into it yourself.
