Trivia / osu!

• Approval of God: Keiichi Yano, who worked on the Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan series, is aware of the game and enjoys the community-driven aspect of it.
• The Red Stapler: This game ended up giving a boost in popularity to tablet peripherals for PC, which are meant for illustrators but ended up being a much more precise and comfortable way to play for many players than a conventional mouse.
• Saved from Development Hell: The lazer build was revealed to be this, since it was originally built on top of the existing osu! codebase before being proven unfeasible and ultimately built from scratch.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • Songs have been known to be removed from the game as a result of DMCA strikes (the game is hosted on servers in the U.S.) due to the fact that the vast majority of songs available do not actually have the blessings of the copyright holders to be uploaded for use in the game by the public. (Song artwork is often used without the artists' permissions as well, although the crackdown on unauthorized visual art use isn't as big due to illustrators having less copyright tools to work with.) The developers are aware of the dubious legality of most uploaded songs, and furthermore have a featured artist program to provide the licensing necessary for songs by popular rhythm game musicians.
  • In September 2023, a_hisa not only had their songs removed from the game's servers, they or someone acting on their behalf went as far as to have osu! gameplay videos featuring their songs removed from YouTube, which incidentally also destroyed several channels that had those videos due to the "three strikes" rule on copyright infringement claims. They also went on a tirade about the unlicensed use of their songs:
    'Why do you hate it so much when people use it without your permission?'
    'I'm giving you free publicity.'
    Because I told them not to use the songs, but they do....
    I appreciate it very much if you can promote us, but please don't do it on a platform that I refuse to use. I feel it's none of my business to use your songs without your permission and tell you how to promote them.
    Also, I don't really want to make money or become famous through music.
• Working Title: The Updated Re Release which will eventually be released as an update to the stable client is named lazer. Before that, it was osu!next.

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