Relationship Issues between Valve and Vivendi?
- Thread starter Feath
- Start date
It makes sence that there are relationship issues. Valve thoughr CS was done enough to report it going gold but it still doesn't show up. Sierra can't be happy about valve's plan to cut them out of the action by distributing games over steam.
PvtRyan
Party Escort Bot
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2003
- Messages
- 10,026
- Reaction score
- 1
'Nobody seems to think it's going to be released this month.'
Releasing 'this' month? How old is this?
But anyway, I doubt Valve would stick with Vivendi if they didn't agree. I REALLY doubt Vivendi would let a goldmine like Valve slip away that easily.
Releasing 'this' month? How old is this?
But anyway, I doubt Valve would stick with Vivendi if they didn't agree. I REALLY doubt Vivendi would let a goldmine like Valve slip away that easily.
I've really jumped on this idea of there being some problems between Valve and Vivendi. I recently found this:
Please tell us what happened to the Dreamcast version of Half-Life that was advertised and hyped (and some reported finished) for months before it was cancelled.
I’m kind of fuzzy myself about the decisions at Sierra or Vivendi/Universal that led to that project not reaching shelves. Gearbox’s involvement was fairly subdued since a group in San Francisco known as Captivation Digital Labs was handling the technology – the port. They are some talented guys who managed to solve some very difficult problems. I’m often disappointed that their work was never released. Gearbox’s involvement was to create bonus content (released as Half-Life: Blue Shift on the PC). We also helped a bit with some of the technical issues that we were already solving for the PlayStation 2 version of Half-Life. I’m afraid that rumors about the game being finished were pretty much true. The game got some great reviews (I think GamePro gave it five out of five – they had a review copy). Unfortunately, I’m not entirely privy to all of the reasons why it was decided it would be better off to not release it, but I bet it had quite a lot to do with Sega’s changed focus in the market and clever accounting tricks to recoup losses.
Could those same accounting tricks be at play in the release of CS:CZ and to some extent HL2?
Please tell us what happened to the Dreamcast version of Half-Life that was advertised and hyped (and some reported finished) for months before it was cancelled.
I’m kind of fuzzy myself about the decisions at Sierra or Vivendi/Universal that led to that project not reaching shelves. Gearbox’s involvement was fairly subdued since a group in San Francisco known as Captivation Digital Labs was handling the technology – the port. They are some talented guys who managed to solve some very difficult problems. I’m often disappointed that their work was never released. Gearbox’s involvement was to create bonus content (released as Half-Life: Blue Shift on the PC). We also helped a bit with some of the technical issues that we were already solving for the PlayStation 2 version of Half-Life. I’m afraid that rumors about the game being finished were pretty much true. The game got some great reviews (I think GamePro gave it five out of five – they had a review copy). Unfortunately, I’m not entirely privy to all of the reasons why it was decided it would be better off to not release it, but I bet it had quite a lot to do with Sega’s changed focus in the market and clever accounting tricks to recoup losses.
Could those same accounting tricks be at play in the release of CS:CZ and to some extent HL2?
S
slapdragon
Guest
Sprafa said:
yeah except that all those "rumors" fragmaster posts turn out to be true, and he's been more right about valve\HL2\cs:cz than anybody. Feath is just mad because fragmaster owned him back in september.
instead of posting questions to this forum you could just mail him and ask him yourself.
Feath
Newbie
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2003
- Messages
- 5,992
- Reaction score
- 3
slapdragon said:
I'm going to say this again:
1) Yes he was right about the game being delayed. But that doesn't mean he was right about Valve knowing the game was delayed since June.
2) And quite frankly he was a prat about it and very insulting to the community.
3) He wasn't right about Steam. In fact, he was really really ignorant about Steam.
CrazyHarij
Party Escort Bot
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2003
- Messages
- 10,075
- Reaction score
- 1
Am I the only one who think Vivendi is trying to take over the world via a huge conspiracy? And they are very bad at "relationships" , for instance Bill Roper and a couple of other bigshots left Blizzard partly because of the bad handling by Vivendi , and VU recently bought Virgin Music, and now they're screwing up Valve.
Feath, you're a guy who's obviously (2,019 posts+) put some thought into the half life 2 situation. But fragmaster aside doesn't it make sence that there's some friction between Valve and Vivendi. I know you thought that is might be XSI in the SDK (ooo that kinda rhymeses) but since, as someone pointed out on another thread there's already a free version on the softimage website, that doesn't seem likely either.
What are your thoughts on the matter and what do you think the holdups are on the games like CS that have already gone gold acording to valve?
What are your thoughts on the matter and what do you think the holdups are on the games like CS that have already gone gold acording to valve?
blahblahblah
Newbie
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2003
- Messages
- 5,036
- Reaction score
- 0
Quixote - your information does not make any sense. A company cannot reduce a loss by not releasing a product. The reason that I know this is that I am an accounting major. Publishing software works like this, they can only capitalize costs (spread costs over time) once it is determined a product can be published. That means if Valve/Gearbox/Vivendi never releases a product like the Original Half-life for Dreamcast or CS:CZ they take a huge loss for one year because they cannot capitalize costs with creating the software. Companies never want to do that because it makes their financial statements look really bad.
Whew...enough with the accounting lessons.
Whew...enough with the accounting lessons.
The information isn't from me it's from the president of Gearbox. And I'm not saying it makes any sense Mr. Acounting Major (which means squat, although a nice way to establish authority, because you could be a sophmore or have a 1.0 GPA, not that you do.) All the information does it point to a prior instance where a completed or at least nearly complete project was inexplicably scrapped.
I do know that a company cannot reduce loss by not releasing a product; however, could a company defer loss to a different quarter in order to make a bad quarter seem not so bad? Or would it be more the case that the cost/benifit ratio of actually pushing the game, i.e. it would cost more to produce the disks than the publisher thought they could sell, make it untenable to continue with release?
edit:
Here's the link where I got my information:
http://www.armchairempire.com/Interviews/randy-pitchford.htm
I do know that a company cannot reduce loss by not releasing a product; however, could a company defer loss to a different quarter in order to make a bad quarter seem not so bad? Or would it be more the case that the cost/benifit ratio of actually pushing the game, i.e. it would cost more to produce the disks than the publisher thought they could sell, make it untenable to continue with release?
edit:
Here's the link where I got my information:
http://www.armchairempire.com/Interviews/randy-pitchford.htm
blahblahblah
Newbie
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2003
- Messages
- 5,036
- Reaction score
- 0
Fair enough. I'm a junior with a 3.8 GPA, I dont care what you believe.
Maybe you dont understand what I mean. If I have a million dollar project and dont release it, I (the company) has to take a million dollar expense immediately or as inccurred.
If I have a million dollar project and release it, I can take those costs and spread them over a period of time (most likely a year or two for a video game). That means for year one I only take an expense based on the amount a sales versus total expected sales (basically a percentage).
Companies really like to capitalize costs because investors are hate to see large losses and anything a company can do to either minimize losses or increase a profit that will be taken. Granted this could be completely different since Sega is Japanese company and may follow different GAAP rules.
In general, a company never wants to delay releasing a product because why delay a product (potential money) when they could atleast be making some money (after all a CD only costs 50 cents)
Anyways, I took a look at your link and I guess your right. It just doesnt make any sense to me. I would have liked to see what bonus content they might have included in the Dreamcast version.
One last thing...what I said above I have summed up quickly so dont take what I say and expect it to be 100% accurate. This topic would take up too much of mine, and anybody elses time to explain it in detail.
Maybe you dont understand what I mean. If I have a million dollar project and dont release it, I (the company) has to take a million dollar expense immediately or as inccurred.
If I have a million dollar project and release it, I can take those costs and spread them over a period of time (most likely a year or two for a video game). That means for year one I only take an expense based on the amount a sales versus total expected sales (basically a percentage).
Companies really like to capitalize costs because investors are hate to see large losses and anything a company can do to either minimize losses or increase a profit that will be taken. Granted this could be completely different since Sega is Japanese company and may follow different GAAP rules.
In general, a company never wants to delay releasing a product because why delay a product (potential money) when they could atleast be making some money (after all a CD only costs 50 cents)
Anyways, I took a look at your link and I guess your right. It just doesnt make any sense to me. I would have liked to see what bonus content they might have included in the Dreamcast version.
One last thing...what I said above I have summed up quickly so dont take what I say and expect it to be 100% accurate. This topic would take up too much of mine, and anybody elses time to explain it in detail.
I appreciate you trying to explain what Randy Pitchford was saying blah (and I didn't mean to impune your achedemics, only wanted to point out it wasn't pertinant to the subject at hand) but I think you may be wrong. Specifically it was Sierra and Vivendi who decided not to publish the game and the general accounting practices of Sega had nothing to do with it. Additionally, a company wouldn't do a run of just one cd even if it really did only cost fifty cents; I mearly bring this up because it's another possibility. I think we both could use an experienced tax evationist erm... accountant to help us understand how not releasing a game could help recoup losses. Perhaps that's why gearbox only does ports.
I really think the holdups on the games is a contractual dispute between Vivendi and Valve's steam. Vivendi had a really rough year on the market and I think they'd be fighting steam tooth and claw.
I really think the holdups on the games is a contractual dispute between Vivendi and Valve's steam. Vivendi had a really rough year on the market and I think they'd be fighting steam tooth and claw.
Feath
Newbie
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2003
- Messages
- 5,992
- Reaction score
- 3
Apos said:
Well, he posted a link to that petition which had a lot of issues about Steam which, if you did a bit of reasearch, you'd realise that they weren't true. I'd have prefered it if he did a little research instead of just linking to the petition and saying something like "Yeah, sure these guys could've phrased there arguments better, but if you don't like Steam, head on over".
Feath
Newbie
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2003
- Messages
- 5,992
- Reaction score
- 3
Quixote said:
Well, Valve said that the game was going to go gold on a certain date, I don't think they said "Yes, the game has gone gold". There's a slight difference between that. And besides we don't know what happened we just know that Vivendi have the Master Disk.
Anyway, I was asking just in case I missed something along the lines of a Gabe saying "I hate Vivendi, they completely suck" or something. I'd been away with minimal internet access for a month so I wasn't sure if I'd missed something like that. As of now, the Vivendi/Valve issue thing is a rumour, and I was just making sure I had all the information. Fragmaster wrote about it as if it was fact, so I thought I'd better make sure.
Yeah, there's a free version of XSI to download on the Softimage website but you can't underestimate stupid liscensing laws. I mean, you can download DirectX 9 for free but PC Gamer UK aren't allowed to put it on their coverdisks because they don't have the liscence or something. Things aren't always as simple as they seem.
ImJacksAmygdala
Newbie
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2003
- Messages
- 166
- Reaction score
- 0
It couldn't possibly be because the Publisher has contractual rights to block a game they don't think is fit to publish under the company's name could it??? CZ couldn't possibly suck so bad that Valve had to push the game from one studio to another because the Publisher refused to let Valve get away with releasing such a dated product for the Count Striker franchise, a franchise which it has a legal right to publish and make money off of its sales.... Maybe the Publisher thought it was so dated that it wouldn't sell enough. Blame Valve for being too buisy to provide a single player experience of CS even though their was once huge fan support for it. Instead they focused on Steam and HL2 and relieved themselves of all responsibility of the quality of the product by outsourcing to other studios. Maybe it wasn't Valve's decision to switch studios all those numerous times, maybe Valve was forced to switch because they couldn't get it published otherwise. Maybe there is also a lot of tension between Valve and the Publisher and CZ is just a pawn in some lame ass pissing match because of Steams release before the major HL2 release....
It still doesn't make any sence I don't see Vivendi holding up a product because it wasn't up to there standards. They published Barbie for crying out loud. I know this is supposed to be a hl2 forum so I'll try to connect the two. As JacksAmygdala put it, it seems to be a giant pissing match AND the game has already been finished, they had a release party in December with what they described as the final version of the game.
And how does this connect? Valve is pushing hard for Steam to be a viable source for distribution; VUgames is counting on half-life 2 to carry them through. CZ is a game that is based on an old engine and is freely downloadable on the net so the low potential for profits does make it a viable pawn to push Valve towards giving them a piece of the pie from sales in Steam (pure conjecture here.) I wonder why Valve hasn't yet set up a place for sales on steam, it would seem wise to test it by selling a pack of all the games offered to those that don't yet have them before attempting to sell what will most likely be a very popular game.
And how does this connect? Valve is pushing hard for Steam to be a viable source for distribution; VUgames is counting on half-life 2 to carry them through. CZ is a game that is based on an old engine and is freely downloadable on the net so the low potential for profits does make it a viable pawn to push Valve towards giving them a piece of the pie from sales in Steam (pure conjecture here.) I wonder why Valve hasn't yet set up a place for sales on steam, it would seem wise to test it by selling a pack of all the games offered to those that don't yet have them before attempting to sell what will most likely be a very popular game.
TechnoHippyChic
The Freeman
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2003
- Messages
- 1,764
- Reaction score
- 103
I
ImportLightning
Guest
I think the "recouperated" loss came from the fact that sega ditched the dreamcast. They "recouperated" some of the loss by not digging a big hole. Sort of like commiting to dig a 10 foot hole and using the dirt to make a 5 foot mound, instead, they relized that they dig a 10 foot hole, and they won't be able to climb out of the hole to form the mound in the first place.
