Things started out with Lightstream, who called out Streamlabs for copying their website and their idea. The CEO of Lightstream chimed in on the situation, saying “The team at Streamlabs should be ashamed, not satisfied enough to ride OBS’ hard work, now to copy ours down to the layout and every word on our marketing site and our UX in this product.”
We’re often faced with confused users and even companies who do not understand the difference between the two apps.
Support volunteers are sometimes met with angry users demanding refunds. We’ve had interactions with several companies who did not realize our apps were separate.
— OBS (@OBSProject) November 17, 2021
OBS themselves quoted the tweet, saying Streamlabs filed a trademark for the inclusion of the OBS name in their product, despite them saying they didn’t want them to. “Near the launch of SLOBS, Streamlabs reached out to us about using the OBS name. We kindly asked them not to. They did so anyway and followed up by filing a trademark. We’ve tried to sort this out in private and they have been uncooperative at every turn.” Many people, streamers and fans were surprised to find that OBS wasn’t actually working together with Streamlabs and that they just took their name and used it.
— Streamlabs (@streamlabs) November 17, 2021
After fans started dropping the livestreaming software from Streamlabs following the controversy, Streamlabs themselves reached out with a statement on the situation. “We are taking immediate action to remove OBS from our name. Streamlabs OBS is built on top of the OBS open-source platform. Streamlabs OBS is also open source and our code is publicly available. We take responsibility for our actions and will support the community.”
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