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."
"To keep the retailers happy. If they charged less, EB/Gamestop/Best Buy/Circuit City/whoever sells games would lose a whole lot of sales. Charge the same price, however, and Steam becomes just another method of distribution with no clear advantage over going to Gamestop and buying the game in person."
All it will take is for one dev release a major title via online distribution and the final sales numbers will speak for themselves. Yes the price to DL HL2 WILL probably be too high if no the same as retail. That was probably an attempt to head something like what's happening off. A case like this is going to make a lot of devs look into their distribution contracts in the future and should Valve win, this might be the touching off point for Online distribution. Personally if I had a choice between $49.95 at retail and $29.95 online, guess what I'm going to pick. The prices used are just as an example but you can see where this is going. This, like the RIAA, is an attempt to maintain their hand in the cookie jar, or better still, slow things down enough so that they can play catch up and figure out a way to gouge consumers in this new medium. Hence we have 99 cent music downloads which are still laughable because you'd be paying about the same to DL a whole album as you would pay retail. This is going to be a long, ugly fight. I wouldn't expect to see HL2 until this is all resolved.
All it will take is for one dev release a major title via online distribution and the final sales numbers will speak for themselves. Yes the price to DL HL2 WILL probably be too high if no the same as retail. That was probably an attempt to head something like what's happening off. A case like this is going to make a lot of devs look into their distribution contracts in the future and should Valve win, this might be the touching off point for Online distribution. Personally if I had a choice between $49.95 at retail and $29.95 online, guess what I'm going to pick. The prices used are just as an example but you can see where this is going. This, like the RIAA, is an attempt to maintain their hand in the cookie jar, or better still, slow things down enough so that they can play catch up and figure out a way to gouge consumers in this new medium. Hence we have 99 cent music downloads which are still laughable because you'd be paying about the same to DL a whole album as you would pay retail. This is going to be a long, ugly fight. I wouldn't expect to see HL2 until this is all resolved.
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