Tech

Industrial band claims Final Fantasy video game ripped them off

by Jeremy Mersereau

Need a boss battle theme for your massively multiplayer online game? Why bother crafting your own exciting music when you can just lift everyone’s favourite sci-fi nu-metal anthem, Powerman 5000’s “When Worlds Collide”?

In case you’re not familiar, Powerman 5000 are the industrial-tinged nu-metal band fronted by Rob Zombie’s younger brother Spider One (probably not his real name). In a Facebook post, the band called out the makers of Final Fantasy XIV for a suspicious soundalike of their 1999 hit, which plays during the second half of a boss fight:

For comparison’s sake, here’s the original:

And here’s the isolated audio track in question from FFXIV, courtesy of YouTube user Mekkah Dee:

After listening, it’s hard to argue that the song isn’t very directly inspired by PM5k’s lone hit from 17 years ago, but is that a problem? Shouldn’t Spider and co. be happy anyone is being influenced by their music at all anymore? There’s no right answer, but: yes.

In response, Final Fantasy XIV director Naoki Yoshida posted this industrial rock history lesson/refutation of the plagiarism accusations on the Square Enix forums:

“Industrial rock is a popular genre that can be further divided into numerous sub-genres. Countless songs from these genres have been released worldwide, and I have been made aware of an allegation regarding similarities between an existing track and the track created for the 2nd phase of Containment Bay S1T7. However, track composer Masayoshi Soken, has also stated to me that he was unaware of the track in question while working on this FINAL FANTASY track.”

Uh huh. Good attempt, but that’s like saying Outback Steakhouse was ‘unaware’ of Of Montreal’s “Wraith Pinned to the Mist.”