In turmoil for the past few days, Streamlabs has a confession to make. The company will be changing the name of its livestream management application following numerous complaints of plagiarism. Indeed, it seems that Streamlabs OBS is heavily inspired by – by which I mean copying – the free and open-source platform OBS, among others.
This comes as Streamlabs has rolled out its Xbox version of its management app, which is said to have copied web material, naming systems, and possibly features from several platforms. For example, Lightstream says that Streamlabs' first site was very similar to its own, OBS explains that it asked the company not to use the OBS name, which it clearly did not do, and Elgato says that Streamlabs Stream Deck is very similar to Elgato Stream Deck on mobile.
A weak excuse
On Twitter, Streamlabs bowed and posted a message in which the company explained that it wanted to change its name in its case against OBS. It read: "We are taking immediate steps to remove OBS from our name. Streamlabs OBS is built on the open-source OBS platform. Streamlabs is also open-source, and our code is publicly available. We take responsibility for of our actions and we will support the community.»
However, these apologies struggle to convince Internet users, who see this as an opportunity to defend themselves for the company. Indeed, the tone of the message is rather defensive, and Streamlabs tries as best it can to justify its actions by specifying that, just like OBS, its source code is also accessible.
Many accuse Streamlabs of having made money on the back of a free site, by taking advantage of all the features that OBS offers. It is therefore not certain that Streamlabs' approach has convinced many people in the gaming community. Especially since the company has still not spoken out on the other accusations of plagiarism, which are just as serious as that of OBS.
Streamlabs could however see the fallout from this affair fairly quickly, since some streamers have already claimed that they would leave the platform if Streamlabs does nothing. We are talking in particular about Pokimane and Hasanabi, some of the biggest streamers on the platform.
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