Ex-Bungie composer Marty O’Donnell says to ‘destroy’ copies of Destiny music
O’Donnell was forced by a court order to get rid of assets he didn’t have permission to distribute.
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In 2014, veteran Halo and Destiny composer Marty O’Donnell was fired by Bungie and ordered to return assets relating to his work onDestiny, including Music of the Spheres, the “musical prequel” he created with Paul McCartney. (O’Donnell was also told to give up his shares in Bungie, which he won back in a court case in 2015.)
Though legally prohibited from sharing or even performing music from Destiny and Music of the Spheres, O’Donnell uploaded musical sketches and variations to YouTube and BandCamp, including an album called Sketches for MotS. This resulted in him being found in contempt of court earlier this year andordered to pay Bungie nearly $100,000 in legal fees.
AsEurogamerreports, he was also told to “post a message, the wording of which the parties agree to, on his Twitter, YouTube, Bandcamp, and Soundcloud sites/channels stating that he did not have legal authority to possessor provide material related to Music of the Spheres or Destiny and asking anyone who previously downloaded any such assets to delete them and refrain from sharing and will destroy any copies of them”.
That message has now gone live. In it, O’Donnell says, “I do not have, and have not had since at least April 2014, the legal authority to possess or distribute non-commercially available material related to Destiny or Music of the Spheres, including material I composed or created while working for Bungie. This material is owned by Bungie. If you posted any of these assets on a website or other publicly available platform, you should remove the content immediately. If you have copies of these assets, you should refrain from sharing, and destroy any copies of them.”
O’Donnell has blamed his firing on meddling from Destiny’s initial publisherActivision, saying thatBungie’s deal with Activision was “bad from the start”.
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Jody’s first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia’s first radio show about videogames,Zed Games. He’s written forRock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue,GamesRadar,Zam,Glixel,Five Out of Ten Magazine, andPlayboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody’s first article for PC Gamer was about theaudio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he’s written aboutwhy Silent Hill belongs on PC,why Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, andhow weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.
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