Charlie the Unicorn creator Jason Steele has hit out at Warner Bros. for allegedly using audio from his viral internet short in a MultiVersus advertisement "without permission".
The teaser - initially posted to social media but since deleted - showed off Reindog's Unicorndog skin, and was captioned "We're going to Candy Kingdom to get the new Unicorndog Variant, Charlie!"
It was accompanied by a video of three Unicorndogs - just like the three unicorns in Steele's video - which allegedly included audio taken directly from the Charlie the Unicorn short.
Charlie the Unicorn.Watch on YouTube
"MultiVersus is a game by Warner Bros, a company with an annual revenue of around $40bn," Steele said on X, embedding Warner Bros subsidiary Player First Game's tweet.
"Here they are using my work, without permission, to advertise their game."
MultiVersus is a game by Warner Bros, a company with an annual revenue of around 40 billion dollars.
Here they are using my work, without permission, to advertise their game. https://t.co/t5LRznScdD
— Jason Steele (@FilmCow) December 22, 2024
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"I'm completely fine with people using my work for non-commercial projects. I've given explicit permission for this before and will continue to do so," Steele explained in a follow-up Reddit thread. "I will never go after an individual for using clips from my work for something like a YouTube or TikTok video, or a Twitch alert, etc. People should be allowed to use and remix art!
"I've seen a number of references to my work in big-company projects before. For example, there's a dead unicorn with an enchanted kidney named Charlie in World of Warcraft. This is fine! It's completely within fair-use laws. Using my audio directly is not fair use.
Charlie the Unicorn’s creator isn’t happy with the new Reindog short
byu/Kirbykoopa inMultiVersus
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"I realise it was not the Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav himself who, reaching down from the Warner Bros water tower, personally yoinked my audio for this ad. It was (I assume) an underpaid and under appreciated social media team member who did it. But it's Warner Bros who profits, and it's Warner Bros who did not give this game's marketing team the budget necessary to properly license media for their social media ads," he concluded.
MultiVersus - which has had an unusual, sometimes controversial development journey since the start of its open beta back in 2022 - is Player First Games' debut title. Amid its push toward mobile and free-to-play titles and away from the "volatile" AAA space, Warner Bros. acquired the MultiVersus developer earlier this year.