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."
Instead of hearing a bunch of people just complaining about Steam (and no I'm not dissing you on this as your complaints sound valid to me), can I hear from those who don't like it what they would like to see instead? What I mean is how would you change Steam so that it met the needs for verification, online distribution, updating, game management and so on? A lot of people here seem really upset about Steam which means to me that you like the game enough to be passionate about it.
As an example, if instead of acting like a game management launcher, like it is setup now, if Steam only launched and then shutdown when it was required, would that suit your needs? Or would having the secondary program launching still upset you? Bioware's Neverwinter Nights launches a secondary program when it needs to be updated, then shuts itself down afterwards. If in launching say Counter-Strike, it detected a newer version, closed CS, launched Steam, downloaded, updated, closed Steam, then relaunched, would this upset you still?
For this to even work though, verification would have to be moved over to the specific game instead so that it could verify while launching/playing. I mean if Steam was changed to just a common API or background app that ran only when the game was launched and closed when the game closed, would this still upset you? If it did then to get around this Valve would have duplicate the exact some code in every single game of theirs which seems kind of ridiculous when you could have one modular system that works in them all.
Hmmm, I wonder if they just changed the default launching options to include launching a specific game only at start would people would still hate it. For example, I never leave Steam running but only launch it when I'm going to play online. I have broadband and usually play CS, so if I launch it and need to update it's usually quick to do so. When I'm done, I shut it down completely. I wonder if this specific game launch option (with an additional option to shut Steam down when closing the game) would suffice people enough. Yes/no?
As an example, if instead of acting like a game management launcher, like it is setup now, if Steam only launched and then shutdown when it was required, would that suit your needs? Or would having the secondary program launching still upset you? Bioware's Neverwinter Nights launches a secondary program when it needs to be updated, then shuts itself down afterwards. If in launching say Counter-Strike, it detected a newer version, closed CS, launched Steam, downloaded, updated, closed Steam, then relaunched, would this upset you still?
For this to even work though, verification would have to be moved over to the specific game instead so that it could verify while launching/playing. I mean if Steam was changed to just a common API or background app that ran only when the game was launched and closed when the game closed, would this still upset you? If it did then to get around this Valve would have duplicate the exact some code in every single game of theirs which seems kind of ridiculous when you could have one modular system that works in them all.
Hmmm, I wonder if they just changed the default launching options to include launching a specific game only at start would people would still hate it. For example, I never leave Steam running but only launch it when I'm going to play online. I have broadband and usually play CS, so if I launch it and need to update it's usually quick to do so. When I'm done, I shut it down completely. I wonder if this specific game launch option (with an additional option to shut Steam down when closing the game) would suffice people enough. Yes/no?
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