Valve versus Sierra [Sep 20, 2004, 11:34 am ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Valve vs.
Vivendi Universal dogfight heats up in US District Court on GameSpot (thanks
Democritus) reveals some details of a behind-the-scenes legal battle between
Valve and Sierra (now part of VU Games) over Half-Life and Half-Life 2 that's
been brewing for several years now. The article picks through details of a
recent court filing by Valve that reveals the current state of the litigation,
which has its next court date on October 8, though an actual trial is not
scheduled until March 21, 2005. Included are disputes over what
role Steam is to take in the game's distribution and who actually holds rights
to the Half-Life intellectual property. Here's a segment that summarizes some of
this:
In court filings, Sierra/VUG says that the current distribution of Half-Life 2 via Steam exceeds the scope of the current software publishing agreement between the two parties. It is apparently seeking the court's assistance in compelling Valve not to use Steam as an avenue of distribution.
On Friday, when asked if Valve was remained intent on making Half-Life 2 available to gamers via Steam, regardless of what was determined on October 8, Lombardi replied, "Yes."
Interestingly, and in spite of the ongoing legal dispute, Sierra/VUG still wants to work with Valve in the future and is asking the court via filings to force Valve to work with it on whatever is next in the development pipeline. It asks the court, in filings, "for a declaration that Sierra and VUG have the right to a fourth engine license pursuant to the terms of...the 2001 Agreement."
According to Lombardi, "We're going to meet the obligations of our current agreement."
Where are you guys getting this crap about Steam from? I've been using it for quite a while and have no problem with it at all - would you rather get the game directly from the people who made it, giving them the lion's share of the profit, or buy from some publisher who's in it purely to make money? Same idea as music - I'd much rather that my favorite band got my money directly than their scumbag record label who's going to give them 10 cents or less on the dollar for it.
To answer that huge list of supposed concerns about Steam - you can set it not to auto-patch, you can easily play single player or LAN games without connecting to the internet, it is not spyware, it doesn't upload (they have talked about this for the future, but it would be a configurable option), and as to the people without internet connections - they couldn't even have Steam in the first place - that's what the boxed version is for. The chances of someone without an Internet connection having the type of computer needed to run HL2 I also think is slim to none.
To answer that huge list of supposed concerns about Steam - you can set it not to auto-patch, you can easily play single player or LAN games without connecting to the internet, it is not spyware, it doesn't upload (they have talked about this for the future, but it would be a configurable option), and as to the people without internet connections - they couldn't even have Steam in the first place - that's what the boxed version is for. The chances of someone without an Internet connection having the type of computer needed to run HL2 I also think is slim to none.
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