According to Polygon, Marty and Mike are suing Microsoft over 20 years’ worth of unpaid royalties with O’Donnel Salvatori Inc., mediating with Microsoft (as per Eurogamer). The lawsuit comes at an inopportune time for Halo as the series is preparing for its first live-action adaptation on Paramount in March. To make matters worse, O’Donnell claims that the two composers’ joint studio could file an injunction and prevent the show from airing if the issue is not resolved soon. It remains to be seen how Microsoft will handle the lawsuit. However, we don’t think that prolonging this case is in Microsoft’s or Halo’s best interests. For what it’s worth, Microsoft explains that the company owns Halo’s soundtrack because O’Donnel worked as an in-house composer for Bungie at the time of its creation. What is interesting here is that Salvatari was always an independent contractor. Not to mention, O’Donnell explains that Microsoft never clarified the licensing agreement despite purchasing Bungie several years ago. Don’t expect the legal kerfuffle between Microsoft and Halo’s OG composers to find a resolution anytime soon. The pretrial conference, which is when all parties involved and the court will set a trial date, isn’t scheduled until May 9. Ultimately, there seems little chance that Microsoft will back pay all the royalties allegedly owed to O’Donnell and Salvatori. Not only does it constitute an astronomical amount, but Microsoft does have its own legal ground to stand on. Plus, Microsoft hasn’t had issues using the Halo soundtrack in several different projects over the past two decades. The last thing that Microsoft wants to do is to pay for music that it has used liberally until now. In other Halo news, the series’ latest mainline installment, Halo Infinite, is losing a lot of players and fast. Also, speaking of Bungie, the original developers of Halo are now part of PlayStation Studios after Sony paid $3.6 billion to acquire the Destiny studio.
