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."
HL2 will be unique in that a WON server was never required when you're not playing a multiplayer game. STEAM is required. Again, Doom 3 doesn't require a central server to play single player, ever.
You can get CS:CZ in a store and install it. It makes a seperate installation that isn't Steam. It doesn't require Steam to run. It doesn't connect to the internet at all. To play online, you have to install the game into Steam, which takes the resources of that single player version and can either leave them (as they are now just duplicate) or can delete them. If you leave them, both versions work (although the single player is unpatched).
It is safe to assume HL2 will work the same way. Therefore, you CAN play HL2 single player if you're so damn worried about magical elves stealing your porn off your harddrive through Steam.
The fact of the matter is, most things people think about Steam are total misrepresentations. It doesn't get file names and store them in a GCF, that's because it sets a file that is a certain size and doesn't zero it out (hence old data can be in it, but will be overwritten). It can start in "offline" mode for LAN play. Etc, etc, etc.
Also remember, since you people keep bringing up Blizzard and Battle.net, that Blizzard got sued for having battle.net get the user's email out of outlook express (or something to that extent) when someone tried to use an invalid or pirated CD Key. They lost. You guys keep saying "oh blizzard this and that and look now valve is eviiiiil" but Blizzard is in fact the one who has already gotten busted for breaking into someone's privacy.
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