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."
If steam is so safe, secure and wonderful then they should make it open source. Then people might actually trust it.
Personally I don't trust any program that has the power to connect to the internet and install programs/files on my machine.
Including IE. yes I hate microsoft but that's because I have to use and sometimes support their software when I know there are better alternatives, like in the case IE, I use Firefox.
As a tweaker I spend time removing programs/services that can eat any amount of processor/bandwidth, that I don't really truely need.
I use ASE to launch games, I don't currently have any valve games(game, did they actually write anything other than HL?)
HL2 looks like it might an okay time waster and may condiser buying it ( on CD ). I don't what to subscript to anything, I don't want the crap and hassle of another user/password to remember ( most people including me use the same user/pass for lots of things which is frankly stupid and anyone doing that deserves what they get. NOTE TO SELF: I must think of new password for this site) just to play a bloody game.
It's that simple remove the need for steam and I'll be happy to lay down my cash.
If steam is so great and wonderful and has all these advantages they why haven't other publishers/developers jumped on the band wagon and created their own versions. Maybe because they read forums and see what a large percentage of people hate it. Maybe if valve had done a better job of it other companies would have followed. All I can say is thank christ they didn't.
Can you imagine if the idea took of, you'd look down at your system tray and 20-30 icons down there, valve, id, activision etc etc.
I just have the clock on my systray and lots of free memory/cpu cycles/bandwidth. What do you have?
Personally I don't trust any program that has the power to connect to the internet and install programs/files on my machine.
Including IE. yes I hate microsoft but that's because I have to use and sometimes support their software when I know there are better alternatives, like in the case IE, I use Firefox.
As a tweaker I spend time removing programs/services that can eat any amount of processor/bandwidth, that I don't really truely need.
I use ASE to launch games, I don't currently have any valve games(game, did they actually write anything other than HL?)
HL2 looks like it might an okay time waster and may condiser buying it ( on CD ). I don't what to subscript to anything, I don't want the crap and hassle of another user/password to remember ( most people including me use the same user/pass for lots of things which is frankly stupid and anyone doing that deserves what they get. NOTE TO SELF: I must think of new password for this site) just to play a bloody game.
It's that simple remove the need for steam and I'll be happy to lay down my cash.
If steam is so great and wonderful and has all these advantages they why haven't other publishers/developers jumped on the band wagon and created their own versions. Maybe because they read forums and see what a large percentage of people hate it. Maybe if valve had done a better job of it other companies would have followed. All I can say is thank christ they didn't.
Can you imagine if the idea took of, you'd look down at your system tray and 20-30 icons down there, valve, id, activision etc etc.
I just have the clock on my systray and lots of free memory/cpu cycles/bandwidth. What do you have?
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