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."
Contracts are fairly easy to breach if you have a good lawyer, and I imagine Valve does.
Do you have an example to back this up with? This sounds like wishful thinking. Money is the easiest way to break out of a contract. You pay the other person enough and he'll walk away happy. You don't and he'll take what you owe him.
When you're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars nothing is "fairly easy".
As mentioned, this is the way of the future for many companies. When they're big enough it makes sense to distribute themselves. They can charge less and profit more. Of course, they can't charge less yet, but the day will come. Publishers will still be needed to fund smaller games, but they'll do online distro, too.
This has little to do with the future, this is about Valve trying to cut Sierra out of the profits they agreed to share with them earlier.
As for the future of distrobution and it being better that way, none of that is relevant. Valve made and agreement and is apparently not going to live up to the terms. Considering that valve has Itellectual rights per that agreement I'd say they are treading on thin ice, if they are found in breach of that contract that gives the intellectual rights back to sierra, then they may lose control of half-life all together.
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