Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

April 28, 2005 - 9:00pm

Valve and Vivendi have jointly announced the settlement of a pending federal court lawsuit filed by Valve in August 2002. Without quoting much of the legal jargon used, the settlement provides for a complete severing of the publisher/developer link which had existed between these two companies, effective August 31, 2005. At that date, Vivendi will cease to distribute Valve's games, including Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source.

Additionally, VU Games has notified distributors and cyber cafes that were licensed by VU Games that only Valve is authorized to distribute Valve games to cyber cafés and grant cyber café licenses. Cyber café operators that were licensed by VU Games have also been notified that any license agreement from Sierra Entertainment, Vivendi Universal Games or any of their affiliates or distributors that may have granted rights to use Valve games in cyber cafés, whether written or oral, is terminated.

With this settlement, Valve has probably become the first game developer to function completely independent of a publisher. From late August the only way to obtain a Valve game will be through Steam and although most Half-Life 2 owners will have some (completely justified) complaint regarding the service, I am sure most will agree that this is a significant moment in the history of gaming.

Valve has read the market and decided that since services such as XBox Live, the soon to be available Phantom and Turner's new gaming delivery system are perfectly capable of delivering video game content, it would have to do the same. Steam may not be perfect but the experience Valve gained from the Half-Life 2 launch will serve it well in the coming years.

What we all agree on is that if the middle-man is to be eliminated and if we are to experience a revolution in the gaming industry we will no longer be able to accept the same pricing. Starting with Valve's games for example, we have to see drops since we are sure that the staff and resources of VU Games must have added to the price and that now Valve can begin selling their excellent product for a much more, consumer-friendly price.

If this settlement between Valve and Vivendi is to bring about a revolution it had better be one that gets rid of excess baggage and ends up making the final product much more widely accessible.

Comments

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

Just because you have a different opinion doesn't mean you should be insulting to others Neophyte. Phone modem usage has been on a steady decline over the past 10 years. Web page contents, media, are getting bigger. More and more games requires broadband connection.There will always be a small percentage of phoneline modem users in North America where there are no broadband access yet. But those areas are shrinking too. The days of phoneline modems as mainstream internet hardware is OVER.Get a grip on reality neophyte. lol.

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

When it comes to Computers, computers suck. They break down at the hint of spyware, viruses, windows over bloating etc and so forth. Even Windows XP is a crappy platform, which people are gonna reghost, reimage, reinstall, reconfigure sooner or later. I re ghost my machines maybe once a week cause of all the crap that ends up on it after a while. I'm just glad that I don't have to reinstall steam every time and that my game stays updated once its updated, so that is ok for steam

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

i agree with the anonys here.install steam. make account.log in. Choose a game and play NOW (emphasis on NOW).launching game. 1 seconds left. launching game. 1 seconds left.........(15 mins)..launching game..1 seconds left...updating game...ready to play in approximately 453 mins 58 seconds...realy to play in approximately 487 mins 58 seconds....progra not responding...(restarts steam, launch hl2 DEMO), 480 mins 1 seconds! steam sucks, end of story.

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

This is a brilliant move by valve and it will save them a lot of resources that they may have wasted while trying to work with Vivendi. However, I do not think they thought this through. Most customers are on dial-up and that will be a very painfull experience for them. Basically, this means that the customer will no longer be able to go to Best Buy and pick up a copy of a valve game because you will buy time to download a valve game through Steam. Steam is a steaming pile of ... it is painfull to have to "authenticate" yourself every time you wish to install a game that you paid for. Customers won't like the idea that once they buy the game, it is still up to Steam and Valve to determine if its really theirs. Come on. Once you pay for a game it is yours. Valve is using steam to keep everything on their servers. Basically, every time you re-install a Valve game, you will be told that if you do not input in the right password, then then you do not own the game. Yeah cut out the middle-man; good for them. The customers will suffer.

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

VU suck balls indeed, but I think all fans of Valve would rather see VU making sure there are copies of Valve games in every store (and plenty of them, almost no complete sell outs in UK, though many were town to 20 or less copies on launch day) than for customers to have to download them all through steam.I personally think Valve have lost their touch with all that pissing about with HL2 delaying it every other week. The game's developers have been owned by the modding community, evidence: Half Life 2 Substance, that mod (although some of the weapons are dumb and the levels crazy) is pound for pound kicking Half Life's ass.I'm gonna play Aftermath and I will more than likely get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but before that happens I'll have to get an illegal copy of Half Life 2 so that I can use the illegal copy of Aftermath that I will obtain to avoid Steam.I vote Valve sues Steam dudes next and then apologises to the gaming community for the problems with Half Life 2

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

Yeah HL2 was not all that great anyways. Did not live up to the hype. I am still playing it and I can only stand it for about ten minutes then it gets boring, then I feel like shooting myself for downloading the shit ince it took like half an hour to download the crap. Theres 50.00 I'll never get back.

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

I must agree that elimating the middle-man makes things far easier. And now that I've got my own credit card, Steam is a great option for me.But I can sympathize for users without credit cards, and people who won't have always-on broadband connections... but we all know Valve does care, and will do whatever they can to improve the experience.

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

Man are some of these people stupid (in the gaming/music industry)!Well, in other words for those on 56k you're f**ked! No buying of video games ever again because they won't put them on CD's, this is the worst news i've ever heard, it sure isn't a milestone in gaming, yeah maybe for you lame ass broadband folks, us dial up users just got f**ked in the ass.f**k you Valve and your shitty steam crap, morons!

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

"I think that Valve will simply provide 56k'ers the option to have a dvd mailed to you, like the Half-Life 2 gold package."Well the thing about that is that Valve still had VU to distribute the Gold Package. Now while it could be possible that Valve could send it themselves, it's extremely iffy. Considering that more and more people are getting broadband everyday (now they outnumber 56k'ers), it may not be the case. What's more, I imagine that most gamers probably have broadband. Sadly, I'm not one of them. I think this'll be a wait and see thing.BTW, I hate Steam. I don't see its purpose. It's touted Anti Piracy features have been breeched. It's a pain in the ass to use sometimes. And because of it, it usually takes longer to get in the game. The only real good thing about it is on-the-fly updates. I hope no other game company goes the same route as Valve.

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

I personally have a mixed view of this matter.On the one hand cutting out VU will cut production costs but also put their games solely onto steam.Not only is steam a bad thing for people with dial up but its a bad thing for people with anything higher such as myself. Mainly because its a downright pain to use and can stuff everything up in so many ways.Surely there is someway that Valve can act as its own publisher and keep stores supplied. It would still cut the costs because they would not have to give VU a cut and everything could be self managed and everyone could get a copy of the games.After all, Whats stopping them now? There is no law saying they can't.

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

i think its good in away, but do you have to download it? maybe they'll give away games free on magazines, then you just have to download small little bits and pay for a code to get the game? u never know, if everyone got into the buy from developer not publisher, then game shops would be dead, that must bring down the price again as i'm sure most retail places shove on at least 50% profit, plus the distriters probably shove on at least 20%, ... be nice not to have to fork out over a days pay for a game?

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

Valve never has the gamers' best interest in mind. To them it has always been about making more money. The price for their games or "services" will never come down to a level that would properly reflect the elimination of the middleman.A few more thoughts:Steam has created more problems instead of solving them. Auto updates takes away the users' ability to decide when and what patches to install. Games could go from working to breaking in 1 update and the users can't do anything about it.Not having a choice to buy the game from stores also makes gamers' life harder. Sure, phone modems are on the way out, but even if you have broadband access, downloading their game content files still takes a very long time, and it easily takes up more than 50% of a typical connection's monthly bandwidth quota.(Mine is 15 gig traffic quota per month)Must have internet connection to play even a single player game. Enough said.

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

Umm...here in the USA we don't have any monthly quota on broadband inet. I have a 5mbps cable so a HL2 download wouldn't be a problem. Though, Steam is still a big pile of shit and is slow and annoying. I'm not too sure which way is better but I tend to lean towards a real cd/dvd. I lile having a real copy of my soft esp. when Steam price is almost the same and you won't get a real cd/dvd. Oh well, like someone said below, we'll wait and see.

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

First off they release a crappy game with horrifically intense blood and gore, then they force you to keep a solid internet connection to play single player and download updates EVERY time you play, now this?Quite frankly I'm all for cracking HL2 so that you don't have to use their stupid steam program, and I OWN THE GAME! I mean, come on! It's enough that it's a crappy storyline and crappy game on a good graphics and physics engine, neither used to their potential, but they're screwing everyone they can over!I hope they die a horrible death and flop.

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

This is what I think will happenValve would be able to sell game for cheaper (less production costs) by allowing you to download their games. BUT with more people downloading games they'll most likley need more servers to handle traffic which means more maintance and prices will rise...Oh and btw no one owns the game, they only own the licenses to use the game (which can be revoked at anytime :-( sadly)

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

o and one more thing i hope Hl2 Aftermath comes out before that date other wise i think i'll just spam them with complaints say get back with vu games or at least another publisheri mean i dont belive this if that still dont work ill buy an illigal copy and they will get no moneyHa Valve shame on youI COMMAND THAT YOU WILL GET BACK WITH VU GAMES NOW

Valve and Vivendi Settle Legal Dispute

They are not stupid. Greedy but not stupid.The reason they are walking all over everyone and slapping the community that has been supporting them all these years and making their mod scene as big as it is now is BECAUSE they KNOW they CAN get away with it with HL/HL2, and CS/CSS.Simply selling more games (well game really, since for the longest time it's essentially just HL. Everything else are mods) is no longer enough for them. Now they are forcing internet cafes to pay them a substantial monthly fee for the priviledge of having Steam on their PCs, disabling accounts with the smallest excuse (sometimes even by mistake with no rectifying actions) forcing users to spend money buying the same game again, and charges more money for resetting stolen accounts.Well kudos to Valve. It takes someone who's a big enough greedy asshole to not give a shit about pissing everybody off just cuz he can.My birthday wish this year is to hope that someone else come up with a game that'll be even more popular than CS. :-)I'll be the first to play it.

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