It certainly looks like Activision is standing firm on its DMCA of Scump, the most popular professional Call of Duty player of all time.
While the DMCA stands, Scump claims to have talked to the CDL about the situation and the takedown, and that those talks were positive. Still, don’t expect to see Scump’s watch parties on Twitch any time soon: “Yesterday, we got [DMCA’d on Twitch],” Scump said. “It was the big talk of the town. I talked to the CDL last night, actually very positive conversations that went down. But yeah, no more Twitch streams during the CDL.”
The tension between the two comes from the CDL’s exclusivity deal with YouTube, which the league recently inked. All CoD League gameplay, even after a match is completed for the day, must be rebroadcasted on YouTube. Otherwise, the content is subject to be taken down. These rules apply to everyone, including the CDL-sanctioned watch parties the majority of fans prefer to watch. Therefore, your favorite watch parties are likely going to be headed to YouTube so they don’t run awry of the CDL’s outdated policies.
For diehard fans of the league, this is terrible news. The vast majority of casual fans of the CDL find the game on Twitch, and YouTube-only broadcasts of the league don’t reach the same peaks they do on Twitch. Normally, caring about the amount of viewership a league gets is only for executives and sponsors. However, with the death of Activision’s Overwatch League, fans of the CDL sister league have been apprehensive about their own competition’s future.
With YouTube exclusivity limiting the esport’s growth and casual browser traffic, there’s a question of whether the guaranteed money is worth it or not. After all, if there’s no league to spend that cash in, what good was the exclusivity deal?
