Why you really shouldn't use MP3 in your HTML5 and Flash games

scirra.com

11 pointsTomGullen2 comments

The MP3 licensing website states at time of writing that an MP3 license will cost US $2,500 per game title. In their own words, a game is described as:

“Interactive software products intended to interact with a user for entertainment (action, role play, strategy, adventure, simulations, racing, sport, arcade, card and board games) and/or education, that may be published for multiple machines, platforms or media”

There is a small saving grace:

“No license fees are due if less than 5,000 copies of a particular game title are distributed”

Distribution of a particular game is not exclusive of web distribution! Take one of our most popular arcade games for example, “8 Bit Runner”. To date it’s far surpassed 5,000 plays. In their eyes this could easily qualify as 5,000 distributions. Had the author used MP3, they’d then be due to pay the MP3 licensers $2,500 for a small online game.

I had absolutely no idea that MP3 has such a license.

I think it's a big problem as we didn't know either until we started writing our game engine and doing some research

Reply on news.ycombinator.com