That Portal 64 demake we liked so much has been kiboshed by Valve: 'They have asked me to take the project down,' creator says
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/758234
This is such a shame, it is such exceptional work... Hopefully switching engines will allow the project to continue.
https://www.pcgamer.com/that-portal-64-demake-we-liked-so-much-has-been-kiboshed-by-valve-they-have-asked-me-to-take-the-project-down-creator-says/Open linkView original on lemmy.world118
Comments23
At first I was a bit disappointed in Valve, but this really clarified some things. Valve is legit scared of litigation with Nintendo, which is 100% a thing I would expect any company to be scared of.
A similar thing happened with dolphin emulator when they tried to release on Steam i think
I wouldn't say it's legit scared.
More like, why? Why fight on behalf of some random person who doesn't have a history with Valve?
Why would anybody risk an extremely long drawn out and expensive lawsuit because of a nobody who has a really cool demo?
They did this with TF2 dev, no it’s not Nintendo anymore it’s Valve.
One of them (the Portal demake) used Nintendo's proprietary code/libraries without permission, prompting a request to take it down, the TF thing ripped off Valve's assets without permission and redistributed them, which got a DMCA. If you see this and think "Valve is out taking down everything they can like Nintendo" you really missed something.
Just stop with the stupid nonsense Valve is in good side, no they aren’t. People’s opinion of Valve was wrong and defended them won’t change that.
For the record: the commenter I am replying to has shown over and over to be very rude and every comment for as far as I can see scrolling down for quite a while is something negative about Valve even when it's simple facts like what they replied to this time.
I wouldn't dare say take anything they say super seriously, and we of course do all know that Valve is still just a company.
Valve negatives are always being shaped into nothingness or acting like it’s normal. A stolen patient is not normal corporate behavior.
They're explained and what gets marked as normal means normal for what their goal towards the general public seems to be, you just look like an insane person with what your profile looks like.
You are the problem if you think a billion dollar corporation should steal game controllers, should not offer refunds, should locked games into locations and other criminal activity that can put you in jail.
Another reminder of the age-old lesson: If you're working on a fan project that involves another company/person's IP, keep it a secret until you're ready to release it. So many cool fan projects get shut down because they get impatient and show off their work so early that they get C&D'd before they ever get a chance to come close to finishing their project.
Don't forget the other age-old lesson:
Be prepared to pivot. There's nothing stopping you from making a homage/inspired by with your own intellectual property.
So instead of being told to stop with a warning, release it and risk being actually sued for damages. Nice.
Maybe you do. Maybe you don't. It's hard to tell, since so few developers ever actually release their fan projects in the first place, so there's not a lot of noteworthy cases to draw precedent from.
But at the very least, you'll end up with a finished product under your belt. You'll have experienced the entire process of designing, developing, and releasing a video game. That's legitimate experience that you can put on your resume, even if you are sued for it. But an incomplete project that got shutdown before ever seeing the light of day is worthless to a developer who may want to pursue a future in software.
In that context, you can still show your work and would have still gained the experience. Nothing about that requires using someone else's IP, but it also isn't going to harm the IP holder like actually releasing such a project to the public would. Using copyrighted materials specifically for personal use or for school projects, both of which are never meant to be released to the public, are generally fair use. These projects were never intended to remain private.
It may not be gone for good
So a company is getting worked up because someone who isnt working for them is using tools from another company that sues over not bowing hard enough to make a fan-made version of the first company's game in second company's system.
In other words "greedy capitalists capitalist all over the place, cool fan game caught in crossfire"
Inb4 fanboys trip over themselves to tell me I'm wrong.
*ouch..
YOU’RE WRONG!