It seems there is no shortage of problems The Banner Saga runs into. Even after escaping the ridiculous trademark dispute invoked by social gaming company King, one of the major creative forces within the developer Stoic has now run into an entirely new mess. Renowned for his work on the likes of Journey and flOw, composer Austin Wintory is being fined $50,000 by the American Federation of Musicians. The reason for this was breaching an agreement which was forced on the AFM members, and widely rejected by the video game industry as a whole.


Taking his situation to YouTube, the composer explained that in 2012 the AFM Video Game/Interactive Media Agreement (VIMA) was put together by committee. Wintory cites in his video that no AFM member was given the opportunity to vote upon its implementation that same year; furthermore, he states that it was rejected universally by video game publishers and developers alike. Due to AFM having yet to replace or modify the VIMA, and despite having gone unused since its creation, he claims that “no AFM musician has been able to work on a new video game score for almost two years.”


Openly calling VIMA a “prohibition” which prevents artists from earning a living, he further explained that any composers can only work without AFM sanction for the past two years. Due to his previous criticisms of VIMA and the lack of progress, Wintory also considered this to be the result of him being targeted by the Federation.

Interestingly, only a few days prior to this video being released, the AFM announced that they were in negotiations with Microsoft for a new deal.


The video can be seen in full below, and Wintry has begun responding to the most common questions asked within the comments section.


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