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Charlie the Unicorn creator Jason Steele has given Warner Bros. a disapproving finger wag after a MultiVersus advert used audio from the short film without so much as a “pretty please” from the multi-billion dollar corporation.
In case you’re not clued up on your 2000s internet lore, Charlie the Unicorn is a four-minute animated video featuring the titular horned horse as he ventures up Candy Mountain, only to have his kidney harvested by his fellow adventuring unicorns. It’s peak 2005 internet culture, popping off on Newgrounds before being reuploaded to YouTube and amassing almost 100 million views between two different uploads.
The short trailer, showing off the new Unicorndog skin for Reindog, was captioned “We’re going to Candy Kingdom to get the new Unicorndog Variant, Charlie!” accompanied by audio from Steele’s work. He then quoted the post expressing his disappointment, writing: “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.”
When questioned on why it was an issue, equating it to a TikTok audio, Steele responded: “I do not care if people use my work in non-commercial projects. If you yourself want to use the audio from Charlie the Unicorn for a meme, go right ahead. If you’re a billion dollar company advertising your game, ask permission!”
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/t5LRznScdDDecember 22, 2024
A very valid and fair point, if you ask me. A simple “are we cool to use this” goes a long way, especially when it’s a larger corporation rather than someone on TikTok with 10,000 followers with nothing to advertise. Steele also provided a little extra nuance in a Reddit thread, reiterating that his main issue lies with a large corporation directly piggybacking off his creation without permission.
“People should be allowed to use and remix art!” Steele wrote. “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.”
He finishes off by writing: “I realize 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 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.”
The whole thing seems like a level-headed and reasonable response from Steele. Calling out those responsible appropriately while acknowledging this likely fell on the shoulders of overworked and underpaid folk is the kind of nuance often left on the table in these situations, and I feel like Steele handled it pretty well. Better than I likely would’ve, that’s for sure.
The original X post has since been taken down on the MultiVersus page, though the account has yet to further acknowledge its misstep. Whether it does or not, the scene is another unfortunate stain on the game’s record—in November, it copped some major blame from Warner Bros. bigwigs for contributing to a hefty loss at the company, being specifically named as the reason for a $100 million writedown.
Kurt Indovina
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