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."
Joe that's an excellent point about making your own install CD. Are you looking for a means to just install or backup the game? I mean if you could just copy the game directory to another external drive (or burn it to a DVD, since it's GB's in size) would that suffice, assuming it worked when you copied it back? Or do you want an actual install CD program?
Either way, you should post this on the Steam forum. It's a very legitimate concern, considering the size of the game, and it would be interesting to see how Valve responds. I can't see why they can't create a utility program that would package up the original game and the update patches in a single (be it large) install file which you could reuse later. However, backing up to a CD, you'd probably have to use another CD burning utility that would allow you to break it apart between multiple CD's (which some CD burning software already has). I'm assuming it would fit easily on a single DVD though (based upon compression of the files inside the install file).
Either way, you should post this on the Steam forum. It's a very legitimate concern, considering the size of the game, and it would be interesting to see how Valve responds. I can't see why they can't create a utility program that would package up the original game and the update patches in a single (be it large) install file which you could reuse later. However, backing up to a CD, you'd probably have to use another CD burning utility that would allow you to break it apart between multiple CD's (which some CD burning software already has). I'm assuming it would fit easily on a single DVD though (based upon compression of the files inside the install file).
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