The original Halo music composers are suing Microsoft over unpaid royalties, Eurogamer can reveal.
Microsoft declined to comment when approached by Eurogamer.
Paramount failed to respond in time for publication.
O’Donnell and Salvatori dispute this.
“It was never work-for-hire,” O’Donnell said.
“It was always a licence deal.
So that’s what we did with Halo.
With the first Halo music ever, that was written and recorded in 1999 for the first time.
It was licensed to Bungie.
Bungie didn’t get bought by Microsoft for over a year.”
In May 2000, O’Donnell became a Bungie employee, working as the studio’s audio director.
The composer claims contract problems began soon after.
And they wanted me to explain what I was talking about.
“And I told them, ‘Look, what you bought was a licence deal for this music.
I didn’t know.
“This is 2000, so it’s more than a year before we released.
And I remember saying, ‘I have no idea, I don’t know.’
Because then I would have said, ‘Well, that’ll be my decision.
I have a vested interest at this point to use this music for the game.’
I just didn’t know yet.
I hoped it would be.
I wrote it so it would be.
“That’s when it first started.
And they said, ‘Yes, we will deal with this later.’
“And I kept saying, ‘Hey, we need to deal with this.’
“And I kept saying, ‘You know, we need to deal with this.
It shouldn’t be O’Donnell Salvatori doing this stuff.
It should be Microsoft.’
O’Donnell left Bungie in acrimonious circumstances in 2014 - years after the Destiny studio had gained independence from Microsoft.
How many digital downloads happened on Amazon or YouTube or iTunes?
We have no numbers.
So we would say, ‘Could you guys tell us what the numbers are?’
And then they just wouldn’t.
But it wasn’t connected to anything.
You guys did a whole new soundtrack.
Then you did a whole new compilation.
How much did you make on that?
And what happened when you did the anime version?
And these other films that you did, which are ancillary?
They’re not the game.
They’re ancillary to the game.
They did tons of different films that had the music in it.
And video projects and stuff.
And we never saw any accounting about that.”
It is not, O’Donnell insisted, a claim of ownership over the Halo music.
We’ve heard nothing.
Look at Halo Infinite.
“I haven’t seen Mike’s name or my name on any of the pieces.
Most people know, well, this is Marty and Mike’s music, right?
We’re hearing Marty and Mike’s music again.’
But they’re not crediting us or accounting for it or anything.
So part of the lawsuit is to discover what the damages should be.”
“I feel disrespected,” Salvatori told Eurogamer in a phone interview.
The monk chant is described as “the theme song from Halo” by one on-screen character.
Since we filed two years ago they’ve continued to ignore the terms.
Tom Buscaglia of law firm The Game Attorney PC confirmed the instruction in an email to Eurogamer.
