Will the litigation delay the release?

I'm kinda wondering that as well, so far no Valve rep has said anything of the sort. I guess Valve is still aloowed to release it in box form, the question will be if steam is kept alive.
 
I read in the Gamespot article that Valve still has every intention of releasing it on Steam, because there will not be a judgement until May 2005.
 
I hope it has no affect. As to whether it really will or not, I don't know.
 
the question will be if steam is kept alive.
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I wouldn't think steam is the problem, just selling the games over steam for download... i can't see why they would have a problem with automatic updates etc...
 
As neccessary for what? To fill up the forums with stacked threads, whern they can all be inside one?

I doubt it will be delayed due to this. What worries me is vivendi trying to delay it for the holiday.
 
This legal battle might force Valve to release HL2 in retail stores first before Steam, which kind of sucks since I was planning on getting the game through Steam. I think Valve and Vivendi should find a way to share profits on games purchased through Steam. On second thought, maybe Valve should switch publishers ASAP. How about Activision?
 
Kanehdian said:
This legal battle might force Valve to release HL2 in retail stores first before Steam, which kind of sucks since I was planning on getting the game through Steam. I think Valve and Vivendi should find a way to share profits on games purchased through Steam. On second thought, maybe Valve should switch publishers ASAP. How about Activision?
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Was that sarcastic? I thought Activision went under.
 
Correct me if I am wrong but didn't Condition Zero go gold in the fall of last year and It wasn't released untill march of this year? If VU can do that to CZ why can't they do it to half-life 2?
 
Rampage said:
Correct me if I am wrong but didn't Condition Zero go gold in the fall of last year and It wasn't released untill march of this year? If VU can do that to CZ why can't they do it to half-life 2?
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That's too long! :(
 
Rampage said:
Correct me if I am wrong but didn't Condition Zero go gold in the fall of last year and It wasn't released untill march of this year? If VU can do that to CZ why can't they do it to half-life 2?
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Because that's part of the Valve lawsuit against Vivendi.

Valve sued Vivendi for copyright infringement back in 2002 over their unauthorized distribution of our products to cyber cafés," Lombardi told GameSpot last Friday. "We later had to add breach of contract claims for, among other things, refusing to pay us royalties owed and delaying Condition Zero out of the holiday season."
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Press and reviews for CZ was pretty bad. Never was as anticipated (in the slightest) as HL2. imo

That contributed I'd guess to it being delayed and messed around with for months
 
aeroripper said:
I wouldn't think steam is the problem, just selling the games over steam for download... i can't see why they would have a problem with automatic updates etc...
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It's a problem for VU, because if a copy of HL2 is sold in stores, they get $X, whereas when a copy of HL2 is sold on Steam, they get jack.
 
[Dragoon] said:
It's a problem for VU, because if a copy of HL2 is sold in stores, they get $X, whereas when a copy of HL2 is sold on Steam, they get jack.
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That's what he said was the problem. Not Steam itself.

Vivendi's issue isn't that they don't get money from Steam sales, it's that they gave up the rights to get money after Valve misled and blackmailed them (or so they claim).
 
[Dragoon] said:
It's a problem for VU, because if a copy of HL2 is sold in stores, they get $X, whereas when a copy of HL2 is sold on Steam, they get jack.
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Who's Jack? :p
 
Any delay to the release that the legal battle has caused would have already happened/been taken into account. Just because we have only just found out about it doesn't mean that, all of a sudden, Valve and VUG have just browsed into Gamespot and said "Wow, we've got a lawsuit? Well that's gonna slow things down a bit". Obviously they have known about this for a while.

Distribution will most likely still go ahead through Steam as planned but, depending on the outcome of the lawsuit, Valve may have to pay a percentage of the profits from the Steam sales to Vivendi. It would be in neither Valves or Vivendis interest to unnecessarily delay HL2 any more.
 
Orange said:
Press and reviews for CZ was pretty bad. Never was as anticipated (in the slightest) as HL2. imo

That contributed I'd guess to it being delayed and messed around with for months
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Not when the game were gold.
 
Both Valve and Vivendi would be "very foolish" not to release HL2.

Reasoning:

It's simple. They are money hungry. Valve already said it was going to release HL2 via steam. If this is the case, vivendi would also have to release the game. If valve went ahead and released the game via steam and vivendi did not, that would be a very very big gamble for Vivendi. If they lost the court case, then vivendi would be left with nothing.

Maybe valve is bluffing that they will release the game via steam in order to force vivendi to release the box versions as well. Vivendi has to release the game if valve does. If they do not, then they will be playing a game of russian roulette in which they could end up with nothing. Not very smart business management.

Half Life 2 will continue as planned by both Valve and Vivendi
 
Wouldn't you think they would've cleared this up during, oh I don't know, THE PAST YEAR WE'VE BEEN WAITING?!

I have to side with Valve. Vivendi did nothing to earn Half-Life intellectual property and as much as I am annoyed at Valve's crap PR I can't stand the fact that a bunch of suits that never played a game in their lives are trying to claim Half-Life as their property.
 
Feath, are you saying they can't do that with HL2 or that they can. I think the answer is they clearly can. Valve threatened to slow down producing games (anyone else think they might have?) and Vivendi can continue to send back RCs until the cows come home and, unless its stated otherwise contractually, set any release date they like.
 
Quixote said:
Feath, are you saying they can't do that with HL2 or that they can. I think the answer is they clearly can. Valve threatened to slow down producing games (anyone else think they might have?) and Vivendi can continue to send back RCs until the cows come home and, unless its stated otherwise contractually, set any release date they like.
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Then valve can just release it on Steam and Vivendi would be losing out on the people getting tired of them not releasing the damned game in physical form.
 
Sorry for the doulbe post but most likely Valve cannot release it over steam before Vivendi's release date. I think the latest court action could slow release and I think Vivendi may take the chance of getting the bullet because they feel they will lose out substantially on sales from steam.

Valve is quite clearly obligated to create this game for Vivendi and from the sound of it a few more besides.
 
if it is delayed till 2005, i say give us modmakers the damn SDK and a small hl2 demo for the rest. yes valve said they wouldn't do these things, but things change.
 
I don't believe a contract exists as of the present for "Half-Life 2" until VU declares it Gold. I think after VU declares HL2 "gold" then Valve probably signs some papers to have HL2 produced. But until then, I believe Valve has free use of HL2 until they give VU the production agreement. Does that make sense?
 
My only concern is VUg held back cz because of steam. And now were heading into a week after VUg recieved the RC. God I hope they don't try to slow down the RC process, out of spite.
 
I don't think "spite" is an option when there is that amount of money to be made, you know what I'm sayin'?
 
It sounds as though valve is under contract to produce the game so even though they can ticker with it they aren't free to release the game or the source code if things go tits up.
 
They are under contract to release a "game" but not necessarily "Half-Life 2"


over use of the " ". :)
 
I don't think it's spite I think it's fear if VU crunched some numbers and game up with a huge margine of people buying HL2 via steam they stand to lose a LOT of money. They could take a look at pre-sales see that they aren't anywhere near where they were projected to be and surmise culprits from there.

Especially since they have CS:CZ to compare it to. If the game sold lousy in the stores but well (relatively speaking it was a steaming pile after all) over steam, they might feel they have a huge problem.
 
I'd wager that it's a might more specific than "game" in the "contract" but I "could" be "mistaken." =) And even if it wasn't HL2 specifically it could be the next x number of games that come out of valve have to go through vivendi, which would also end up delaying half life 2.
 
There are already two threads on this...

Official Halflife2.net News Thread: Here

Half-Life 2 General Discussion Thread: Here

*Closed*
 
I put some more thought into this, and I'll allow this thread to continue.

*Opened*
 
All in all, I think that HL2 will be released how we thought it was going to be released yesterday, considering the lawsuit is nothing new. Just new to us.
 
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