Big time lawsuits brewing between Valve and Vivendi

Let's all just storm VUG's offices and fist them all.
I've got dibs. oO
 
Mountain Man said:
A contract must be fulfilled in good faith. Thus, Valve could not just throw together some P.O.S. game and hope that Vivendi will be fooled into thinking the contract has been fulfilled. Valve must make a good faith effort to meet the specified terms or they could be held liable for breech of contract.
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They could just patch TFC again.... what are they up to now??

1.9999998? either way it still isnt a 2.
 
traesko said:
Let's all just storm VUG's offices and fist them all.
I've got dibs. oO
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I'm not into sticking my fist up .........

Unless it was someone I really hated.
 
shad3r said:
unless the situation deteriorates to the point that Valve just go ahead and distribute on Steam regardless.

i guess the 2001 renegotiated contract must have specified simultaneous online and retail distribution. otherwise with the relationship in that state, HL2 would be released on Steam already.
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I hope this is the case. I for one am sick of publishers strong arming developers. For VUG to even cry that valve used shady tactics is plain pathetic. When for years it has been the publishers lying and misleading developers into early releases, and very very shady contracts. New developers get robbed by publishers constantly.
 
If you think about it, considering the fact that VUG delayed CS:CZ past the holiday season is part of the breech of contract claim Valve made, I doubt that while this trial is going on VUG would have the balls to delay another Valve game uncessesarily.
 
Inanimate said:
This must definitely delay teh game..

check this..

http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=143375
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This legal battle has been going on for a long time now, if they were to delay the game that long then the decision to do it would have been made quite awhile ago I suspect, and if that was the case then why would Valve have sent a copy to a gaming magazine to get it reviewed?
 
Also, I think this is a very important point to get across to people, now that we know about what VUG is doing:

BUY HL2 OVER STEAM INSTEAD OF BUYING IT THROUGH RETAIL.

I was going to buy HL2 through Steam regardless of this, but because of the suit, I hope everyone goes through Steam, and does it solely to harm VUG.
 
Xcellere said:
Also, I think this is a very important point to get across to people, now that we know about what VUG is doing:

BUY HL2 OVER STEAM INSTEAD OF BUYING IT THROUGH RETAIL.

I was going to buy HL2 through Steam regardless of this, but because of the suit, I hope everyone goes through Steam, and does it solely to harm VUG.
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Ya its the same with me, I will definately be buying through Steam now.
 
All I'm worried about is Half-Life 2 getting delayed because of these court actions. Everyone wondered what took Condition Zero so long to be released once the game was done. Heck, Valve had a party before 2004 and yet the game was released months later. Valve developed Steam without help of VU Games, if VU Games and Valve signed something saying that Valve CANNOT distribute its own game then fine but Steam was not around then, whether or not it was in development at the time does not matter, its intellectual property and Valve did not need to reveal it to VU Games. They do have to come to an agreement on how the distribution will go but I can say without a doubt that Valve and VU Games WILL MAKE MONEY! No one is going to be short-changed here. There are PLENTY of people that will never buy a game off of Steam. I have an ATI coupon but I'll also be buying the CE of Half-Life 2 at my local Best Buy the morning its released.
 
The Mullinator said:
This legal battle has been going on for a long time now, if they were to delay the game that long then the decision to do it would have been made quite awhile ago I suspect, and if that was the case then why would Valve have sent a copy to a gaming magazine to get it reviewed?
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Why would Valve insist they were going to make the September 30 release deadline when they should have known for months before hand that they wouldn't make it?

In other words, open ended hypothetical questions don't really provide any answers.
 
the game isnt going to be delayed because of the legal suit... end of discussion.
 
Vivendi won't hold up the release of the game, because that would hurt its overall sales. And Vivendi, being in money trouble, wants its overall sales to be great. I'm pretty sure the best move for Vivendi would be to let Valve release it via Steam and then just sue Valve for damages later, if the court decides Valve acted improperly somehow.
 
Mountain Man said:
Why would Valve insist they were going to make the September 30 release deadline when they should have known for months before hand that they wouldn't make it?

In other words, open ended hypothetical questions don't really provide any answers.
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I think they really did believe they were going to make the September 30th release date when they first announced it, eventually as time went on something was happening behind the scenes that made things really complicated and caused them to continue saying September 30th (maybe problems with Vivendi?).

I would trust the evidence of them sending a copy to be reviewed more than what was simply said during a very tumultuos time.
 
Element Alpha said:
Sometimes I wonder if IP rights are truely required. Let me explain:

-Would you rather have a picasso drawn by the artist himself, or would you rather see a painting made by his family (who own the rights)?

-Would you rather hear James Brown live singing whatever, or would you rather have his music label personnel on the stage trying to humm along?

Get my point?
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No, these scenarios dont play out with or without IP laws involved.

Laws are laws, but talent is talent. You can't buy talent. What is Vivendi going to do with rights to halflife? They can't even make a html page, let alone a sequel to the halflife franchise. Now even if they would sell it to a developper who would make HL3, it wouldn't be the same. And valve would make a game called "This isn't a sequel no sir it's not halflife(tm by the shmucks) no you didn't see that" or another irrelevant title, and people would still buy it, because they'd know it'd be worth it. I'd still buy their games if it was called "pile of excrement taken from the cow's cavities volume 1".
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What does it matter? By this example everything HL goes down the drain, Vivendi makes a crap game, and valve gets to make some other game that has absolutely no Gordon Freeman, black Mesa, City 17, Striders, Headcrabs etc. All the fiction produced by Laidlaw and all the time and effort Valve put into creating the Half Life universe is no longer thiers. Valve cant touch it. Now Vivendi owns all thier hard work and effort.

Brand awareness is far more important to normal consumers than author. For every hundred people that know what Star Wars is, only 1 know who Lucas is. In 50 years it will probably be 1 in a thousand. Anyone on this forum right now, is not an average consumer. Of the possible millions of people that will eventually buy Half life, gamers like us probably make 1/3 of that number. Point here being that most of the people that will buy HL2 havent been sitting here waiting all year, wouldnt know who Gabe was if he was sitting on them, and could care less that Valve made the game. Hell even the people who buy EA sports games year after year dont know who "Electronic Arts" is...let alone the developers who actually made the game.

I'm just trying to say sometimes just knowing who made something is more powerfull than whatever copyright law anyone could ever write.
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Thats exactly what "Intellectual Property" is. This is a capitalisit society so weve extended right to the people "who made something" so that they can enjoy the profit or benifit that comes with thier IP. Because there are profits to go along with that IP, all these laws do is give the right to those profits to the person who owns them, rather than let there be a free for all. Do you really think Valve would continue making games if anyone could publish thier game, and stories and action figures and whatever based off HL without ever asking permission or spliting the profits made off Valves IP, with Valve themselves?

We definatly need to re-work the way we deal with and digital pattents and copyrights and so on, because the archaic laws we use for physical properties just doesnt apply to intangable ones. But IP laws are designed to apply to intangable properties, and they do so just fine.

Element Alpha said:
Take away money, ownership, property, and all that.You think people would stop making music, writing stories, and all that?
Go ahead make me laugh.
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That statement has nothing to do with IP rights at all, in fact it has nothing to do with the topic at all. What point are you making? That people would still sing and dance if they didnt need to do it to support themselves? Well no shit, but would the guy picking up your garbage, or cleaning puke off the sidewalk keep doing thier jobs? Probably not. But does that have a damn thing to do with IP or half life? NO!
 
MetalliMyers said:
Speaking of Copyright Infringment, maybe you should have just linked the article.
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The gamespot article?

I did link it, posted the full and unedited article and even included the Author's name at the end.

This was a perfect citation.
 
Vivendi must be retarded. They had a chance to get revenue off of 90% (estimated) of HL2's sales, and now they're disenfranchising one of the most popular developers in the world just to get that last 10%.

What are they going to do when Valve switches to Activision? Beg for change? Dumbasses. "Let's throw our biggest profit out the window!"
 
Did you guys read the article? It basically said Valve has been causing delays to spite Vivendi. They are screwing us just to stick it to thier publisher. Screw Valve and Vivendi. Valve sure as hell arent without fault, I beleive every allegation against Valve for underhanded doings. Theyve done things like that with us, to a lesser extent, I dont doubt for a second they did shit like this to Vivendi.

I'll buy HL2 regardless, and through steam because Im lazy not to spite Vivendi. But I gotta say even though my trust and respec for Valve has always been slowly slipping, this is just outrageous, and explains a hell of alot.
 
Parasite said:
Did you guys read the article? It basically said Valve has been causing delays to spite Vivendi. They are screwing us just to stick it to thier publisher. Screw Valve and Vivendi. Valve sure as hell arent without fault, I beleive every allegation against Valve for underhanded doings. Theyve done things like that with us, by mis-representing delays, and not giving straight answers, I dont doubt for a second they did shit like this to Vivendi.

I'll buy HL2 regardless, and through steam because Im lazy not to spite Vivendi. But I gotta say even though my trust and respec for Valve has always been slowly slipping, this is just outrageous, and explains a hell of alot.
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I think it said that they were "threatening" to do that, not that they actually did. Besides I would support them to a degree if they did that, publishers have way too much power and they abuse it (at least thats the way I see it), some developer has to make a stand.
 
This means that if vug wins the lawsuit, we could be seeing a halflife3 made by a korean budget developer.

I hope everyone showers vug with hatemail, maybe if we make it clear that we hate them enough we can get them to drop it.
 
Homer said:
I hope everyone showers vug with hatemail, maybe if we make it clear that we hate them enough we can get them to drop it.
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Yeah thats real mature :rolleyes: And doing it while they are RC testing HL2, CS:S, and HL:S. Not a good idea.
 
Homer said:
This means that if vug wins the lawsuit, we could be seeing a halflife3 made by a korean budget developer.

I hope everyone showers vug with hatemail, maybe if we make it clear that we hate them enough we can get them to drop it.
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Huge companies don't work like that, send them all the hate mail you want (set a world record if you can), it won't make a difference to them. Once a company gets as big as Vivendi and it starts to have as many problems as Vivendi currently has the company usually goes into a state of disarray as individual peoples egos get the better of the company and decisions are made that are not at all in the companies best interest.

Even the threat of poor sales probably won't make much of a difference to Vivendi at the moment.
 
Mechagodzilla said:
Vivendi must be retarded. They had a chance to get revenue off of 90% (estimated) of HL2's sales, and now they're disenfranchising one of the most popular developers in the world just to get that last 10%.

What are they going to do when Valve switches to Activision? Beg for change? Dumbasses. "Let's throw our biggest profit out the window!"
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They aren't getting 90%, they would be getting closer to 30%. they are suing for the 70%.

If valve wins this, and thats a pretty big if, then we could se the way games are made change forever. There would never be another game pushed out the door early by bastards like EA and VUG, developers would controll the destiny of their own games... it would be great for us. Course, it may not be so good for the economy, because it would drive multi-billion dollar publishers out of buisness...
 
The Mullinator said:
Huge companies don't work like that, send them all the hate mail you want (set a world record if you can), it won't make a difference to them. Once a company gets as big as Vivendi and it starts to have as many problems as Vivendi currently has the company usually goes into a state of disarray as individual peoples egos get the better of the company and decisions are made that are not at all in the companies best interest.

Even the threat of poor sales probably won't make much of a difference to Vivendi at the moment.
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DiSTuRbEd said:
Yeah thats real mature :rolleyes: And doing it while they are RC testing HL2, CS:S, and HL:S. Not a good idea.
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None of that changes the first part of what I said.
 
Unless there is a patent on the technique to remove the blindfold you have over your eyes, I suggest you do it.

"Intellectual property" is a "good" created by "man" to "regulate" the "ownership" of "creativity"

"and" "the" "thing" "is" "the" "nature" "of" "creativity" "can't" "be" "regulated" "like" "some" "people" "with" "too" "much" "power" "would" "like" "it" "to" "be" --> "some" "things" "are" "not" "ment" "to" "be" "owned"

Y o U CANnOT C on T rol CR e a TI v ITy

yoo kant poot rooles onn creeaiteeveetee

it's "eitherhere" or it's "eitherisn't"

money has nothing to do with it, and if not for money, what else are all these laws for? why not just have a record of who invented what first? we could and should elaborate beyond that.

But things have got out of hand today, you have to admit it.

You do have some points, parasite. But what am I supposed to do with them when you look at the results of these laws? I'm just supposed to nodd and smile? I know there's a difference between copyrights, licensing, intellectual property, trademarks, patents, etc... but lets keep it simple, mkay?

Valve make game -> no game because valve is maybe not owner or maybe is first find out only then we get game and maybe lies everywhere and nobody understand anymore what gives ???

There's something wrong with this picture, can you find it? Or are you still trying to find out wether there's a patent on the technique to remove the blindfold from your eyes?
 
Homer said:
They aren't getting 90%, they would be getting closer to 30%. they are suing for the 70%.

If valve wins this, and thats a pretty big if, then we could se the way games are made change forever. There would never be another game pushed out the door early by bastards like EA and VUG, developers would controll the destiny of their own games... it would be great for us. Course, it may not be so good for the economy, because it would drive multi-billion dollar publishers out of buisness...
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Your kidding me right? All this means is that Bigtime publishers will find a way (probably much like steam) to control all means of online distribution. Developers dont go to publishers because they need someone to take care of shipping, they go to them because they need someone to pay for the cost of the games development. Steam is not gonna change that. Independent developers are still gonna be very much dependant on the publishers to pay thier salaries.
 
I think that indeed both companies want HL2 out asap, because they will both profit heavily from it and let's face it; Vivendi can use the cash.

Vivendi just went overboard when they said they wanted the rights to HL. But I don't think Valve is completely innocent either. Misleading statements could very well be, we've seen them before in the past from both Gabe and Doug.

I think the fact that Valve could fund themselves with the sales of all the Half-Life products went to their heads and went a little overboard and ignored the fact that they're still under contract with Vivendi/Sierra.

However, Valve controlled every aspect except for the shipping when it came to HL2, it was their game, their product, they funded it with the sales from HL1, I think Vivendi kinda went "Whoa we can't control them anymore" and started wanting the rights to HL products.
 
contracts are a sticky thing. some years back a mon in texas came up with a idea for porting old databases over to new ones. This idea was entirley in his head, but upon mentioning it to his boss his boss oderd him to reveal it so his company could use it. apparently there was a clause in his contract that stated that anything he invented in the time he worked there belonged to the company. He refused of course, and was fired then sued by the company for the rights to a IDEA that only existed within his own mind. He lost the lawsuit, but never told them his idea, he swore to keep it untill he died. Theres a nice example of intellectual property for ya.
 
Parasite said:
Your kidding me right? All this means is that Bigtime publishers will find a way (probably much like steam) to control all means of online distribution. Developers dont go to publishers because they need someone to take care of shipping, they go to them because they need someone to pay for the cost of the games development. Steam is not gonna change that. Independent developers are still gonna be very much dependant on the publishers to pay thier salaries.
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They go to publishers to publish games. Hence the word 'publisher'. If they didnt need distrobution to be payed for by someone else then they wouldnt need a publisher, all they would need is a decent sized wad of cash to float through development. and even if they didnt have that, the publishers stake in the game would be much less important if more aspects of the game were handled independantly of them.
 
Element Alpha said:
Unless there is a patent on the technique to remove the blindfold you have over your eyes, I suggest you do it.

"Intellectual property" is a "good" created by "man" to "regulate" the "ownership" of "creativity"

"and" "the" "thing" "is" "the" "nature" "of" "creativity" "can't" "be" "regulated" "like" "some" "people" "with" "too" "much" "power" "would" "like" "it" "to" "be" --> "some" "things" "are" "not" "ment" "to" "be" "owned"

Y o U CANnOT C on T rol CR e a TI v ITy

yoo kant poot rooles onn creeaiteeveetee

it's "eitherhere" or it's "eitherisn't"

money has nothing to do with it, and if not for money, what else are all these laws for? why not just have a record of who invented what first? we could and should elaborate beyond that.

But things have got out of hand today, you have to admit it.

You do have some points, parasite. But what am I supposed to do with them when you look at the results of these laws? I'm just supposed to nodd and smile? I know there's a difference between copyrights, licensing, intellectual property, trademarks, patents, etc... but lets keep it simple, mkay?

Valve make game -> no game because valve is maybe not owner or maybe is first find out only then we get game and maybe lies everywhere and nobody understand anymore what gives ???

There's something wrong with this picture, can you find it? Or are you still trying to find out wether there's a patent on the technique to remove the blindfold from your eyes?
Click to expand...

Not controlling creativity... protecting creativity. I dont understand why you think its a bad Idea to restrict people from stealing other peoples ideas and property and calling it their own!

First of all: Where are you from... that might put some perspective on this.

I'm from the US of A
 
Developers go to publishers because of the publishing and the cash they'll be getting to develop that product. However, it then becomes property of the publisher instead of the developer.

This didn't happen with both HL1 and HL2, Vivendi/Sierra couldn't say shit about the development process of both games. Both games were funded by Valve, and just published by Vivendi/Sierra. Now Vivendi wants more, thus demanding rights to HL.
 
If it becomes possible to distribute a game online cheaply and effectivly, we may be able to go back to those golden days when a couple of guys in a garage can make and release a really great origonal game. Anything that loosens the publishers noose around the neck of developers is a great thing for games.
 
DrPowers said:
Not controlling creativity... protecting creativity. I dont understand why you think its a bad Idea to restrict people from stealing other peoples ideas and property and calling it their own!

First of all: Where are you from... that might put some perspective on this.

I'm from the US of A
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You cannot register/protect/own rights to an idea. You CAN however, own rights to a product based on your idea.

An idea: First Person Shooter
The product: Wolf3D

If idSoftware was allowed to own rights to their idea of the FPS genre, idSoftware would be the ONLY company allowed to publish games within that genre.
 
Homer said:
If it becomes possible to distribute a game online cheaply and effectivly, we may be able to go back to those golden days when a couple of guys in a garage can make and release a really great origonal game. Anything that loosens the publishers noose around the neck of developers is a great thing for games.
Click to expand...
It already is possible. I remember the developer Running with Scissors wanted to publish the game themselves over the internet from their office and put it on the mail themselves because they couldn't find a publisher for their game Postal 2, they did find one in the end however, a small starting publisher.
 
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