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The DMCA's are also for their source game. It is the long death of what we once knew as valve. In 2010 these kinds of projects would have been supported and mo
by devwastaken 3y ago
The DMCA's are also for their source game.
It is the long death of what we once knew as valve. In 2010 these kinds of projects would have been supported and motivated by valve devs. It would be sponsored and happily on the steam store even. Theyve allowed so many source game assets to be used in non licensed ways that they have effectively been used as open libraries for game dev. It is the idea behind garrys mod and countless source clones.
Valve has a choice, they don't have to cry copyright infringement. Portal and TF2 are widely profited successfull games. Nobody is stealing profits because they're fundamentally transformative works not designed to compete.
Even in the bad case, the solution is communication, not lawyers. By introducing lawyers into this valve is intentionally escalating the issue. If they actually thought it was worth the DMCA it would be worth a conversation. There are open source N64 libraries that replace the very old n64 libs.
Unfortunately this means that valve is no longer a corp headed by game devs. It's corporate exec, HR and lawyer types. Likely due to the fact that Gabe Newell has been largely uninvolved in the last 10 years. They're following the market trend because innovation is hard and requires strong vision and leadership.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoIsn’t DotA2, one of their core properties, built on a somewhat generous interpretation of what constitutes fair use?
- whateveracct 3y agoI don't think it's _that_ generous. icefrog nominally owned the "dota" title (nobody challenged it at least), and the game mechanics & controls are too generic (and also configured by icefrog in a transformative way) to count as copying WC3. They already made the characters different enough (they even tweaked some over the years when they were too close to Blizzard properties, like Leoric and Windrunner). You could probably have a game have game engine parity with WC3 with original IP and get away with it.
- jamesfinlayson 3y agoRiot Games sued Valve in 2010 about trademarking the name DotA but it seems like they settled and Valve got exclusive commercial use of "Dota".
- xinayder 3y agoPretty sure it was Blizzard and not Riot. Dota was a mod for Warcraft 3.
- jamesfinlayson 3y agoIt was Riot Games but it looks like Blizzard sued Valve in 2012 for similar reason (I thought the Blizzard law suit was about some characters being too similar but maybe that was yet another lawsuit).
- whateveracct 3y agoTrue. That's trademarks though. If they lost, they could've just given it a different name but have the game be otherwise the same.
- kevingadd 3y agoClassic 'rules for thee, not for me' game dev story. All the big companies rip off smaller developers when it's profitable to do so.
- speff 3y ago> Unfortunately this means that valve is no longer a corp headed by game devs. It's corporate exec, HR and lawyer types That's a very interesting statement to say after the release of the steam deck considering how open it is as a platform. They could just be in the process of making a TF2 port to the new source 2 engine
- Tmpod 3y ago> They could just be in the process of making a TF2 port to the new source 2 engine Highly doubt that, TF2's development has pretty much been on life support for quite some time, merely including art work and patches made by the community. It would be really cool if it was the case, but I'll believe it when I see it.
- jamesfinlayson 3y agoAn alleged screenshot of their version control a few years ago suggested this is the case but there's nothing else to confirm it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]