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."
ol, I knew you would use the Battlenet as argument, even though it lacks heavily as such.
Battlenet is part of EVERY Blizzard game and not a program you need to start first before you can play any Blizzard game or download games with, etc. It is just like those ingame server browsers (which are most of the time MUCH more efficient than Steam).
And what exactly does being a part of the program or not have to do with what you were arguing about before?
Easy Conclusion:
Valve can do with Steam what they want, include spyware or make it even more unefficient (is that possible?) and people will still love them and buy their crap.
Blizzard can include spyware all they want in their games on cd's; through battle.net updates or downloadable patches. Additionally, they can make b.net 1000 times more inefficient to their hearts content; and if you want to play online, you're stuck with it..
Patches you download from B.net are the same as patches you download from Steam. You HAVE to have them in order to play online, and you don't REALLY know what's in them.. Blizzard could add spyware and crap just as easily as Valve. So I again ask "How is this any different than Blizzard Entertainment? Or Bungie? Or id Software? Or any other big developer with a fanbase?"
Ultimatly, it's not
Hell, Valve could have screwed us over at any time before Steam was even a glimmer in their eye. It seriously must suck to not only be a chicken little, but to be a LATE chicken little to boot. Oh, and I don't know about you, but if Steam is sucking up your resouces bad enough to affect gameplay; you're PROBABLY not going to be able to run vary many modern day games anyway.
Then again, I dunno.. I guess 3mb loss of ram could seriously affect your HL2 experiance.. I'd just hate to see how badly it would run before that.This comment was edited on Oct 19, 2024, 06:08.
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