Tommy Tallarico is CEO of Intellivision and a longtime game musician.
Tommy Tallarico is CEO of Intellivision and a longtime game musician.
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Tommy Tallarico settles copyright dispute with Roblox over ‘oof’ sound

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Tommy Tallarico, the CEO of Intellivision Entertainment and longtime game sound creator, has settled a copyright dispute with Roblox over the famous “oof” sound that has been a defining part of that game platform.

Back in June 2019, Tallarico made some noise about how Roblox developers were using the “oof” death sound that had become familiar to the platforms’ 164 million monthly active users. Last year, Tallarico learned that the oof sound was the same as something he had created for the game Messiah, which came out in 2000. The sound found use in some early Roblox user-generated content games, and it just kept on spreading over 15 years.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.