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."
If valve is cutting all of this out of the loop and everything they make is going directly to them... WHY THE HELL ARE THEY STILL CHARGING AS MUCH AS RETAILERS!!!
Well, for starters, someone else already mentioned this. If they made the price too low, they'd piss off Sierra / VU as well as all of the retailers. It's probably in contract that they won't undercut everyone. After all, they don't want to completely alienate every publisher out there
Second, it's not like all costs are going out the window. They have to pay for insfrastructure, support, bandwith, upgrading/fixing the STEAM client, etc.
The more people that use it, the more personel they need to administer the servers and accounts, as well as fix things. They also need servers. They also probably have to pay for bandwith (probably flat rate, but rate increases if the usage goes up too much).
Providing a service like this is pricey. Why do you think some MMORPG's charge like $15 USD a month (in some cases). They need to admin the servers, expand when necessary, and fix software issues. Yeh, part of it is so they can constantly milk a small profit per user, but they have to cover costs.
And before you say "well, Blizzard doesn't charge," I have to admit I have no idea how they support Battle.Net out of pocket.
Yeh, you can call them greedy, but something has to pay for the service. At least it's not a monthly fee or something.
"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you."
-Fry, Futurmama
This comment was edited on Sep 20, 15:35.
"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you."
-Fry, Futurama
-Fry, Futurama
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