this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Stop with the fan projects already.
These companies don’t give a shit and will just squash any project that they can’t milk for funding.
Best case scenario you never release your work in fear of getting sued and nobody gets to play your game.
Make new projects inspired by these games and actually build your own fanbase instead of being at the behest of greedy corporations.
You know, you chose a bad post to get edgy.
Valve is actually one of the companies that treats fan projects very well, sometimes they'll even let you sell your project on Steam (see Black Mesa remake).
Well, not this fan project…
No, but one example does not define everything.
Before the announcement of Counter-Strike 2, a hobbyist team made a prototype of CSGO in Source 2. Then Valve made them stop. Same with TF:Source2 now.
Yes, but Valve didn't block it based on their own IP. The focus really should be on the fact that Nintendo is so litigious. This was a fan project of a non-Nintendo IP. Their reputation is preceding them.
Yeah... what this likely means is one or both of two things, for this Portal Demake and the Source 2 TF2 thing mentioned by another below:
1: Valve is still quite protective of their IP and may be working on their own new releases of some kind in these IP franchises.
and/or
2: Valve is still quite protective of these IPs and may have identified something like serious misconduct regarding something about these particular projects, or the people working on them... or they just are not looking to be even good quality games, and Valve does not want their actual games to be associated with or confused with games they expect to be of low quality.
I realize option 2 there is a bitter pill for many to swallow, but we are talking about a gaming company that is fairly well known for taking actually good mod ideas and at least attempting to hire or in some capacity work with the devs to create what often turned out to be successful games.
They are notorious for high standards in their own IPs. You've got Black Mesa and I think theres one HL2 mod that focuses on you as Commander Shepard from Opposing Force that were both actually greenlit to be sold, for money, as games on Steam, as well as a large number of successful HL2 mods that were not cancelled and are distributed for free by Steam, including Entropy Zero 1/2 and MINERVA.
Its actually pretty uncommon for Valve to DMCA Cease and Desist over mods... theres probably more at play here than just Valve are big meanie heads.
It's explained in the article, actually. ;)
The project was using Nintendo proprietary libraries, and Valve's already shown on previous occasion that they don't really want to go to court with sue-happy Nintendo.
Dear fucking god yeah then Valve was definitely trying to save these idiots from themselves, thats nearly certain to get them fucked.
Why would Valve be sued by Nintendo, considering that they aren't involved with that fan project at all?
The actually law DEMANDS you defend your IP or you effectively lose it
Damn, remember when Sega lost the sonic IP to all the fan games?
Yep.
After a tiny bit more research, it looks like for the Portal Demake, Valve did not even actually issue a Cease and Desist, they actually just heavily recommended the project be cancelled /out of fear of the devs being fucked by the far, far more absurdly litigious Nintendo/.
While I think Nintendo's actually legal argument in that, which would basically be that a whole art style from the lower res and lower poly graphics constitutes essentially their brand ... I think this is bullshit and legally dubious, but of course Nintendo has faaaar more money to throw at lawyers than some random indie dev, so theyd likely have their lives ruined one way of another.
Portal64 builds the ROM locally. A legal copy of Portal for PC is required to extract and convert the assets. Websites distributing the finished ROM are liable for copyright violation against Valve but Valve isn't liable for anything regarding that fan project by Nintendo.
You know that's not how lawyers view projects in development
You know that Nintendo's lawyers did not even raise a finger, right?
When did I say Nintendo
The repeated claim is that Valve acted on behalf of Nintendo because it uses APIs copyrighted by Nintendo. At no point did Valve protest the use of their assets.
Guess you didn't hear about TF2 in Source 2.
Sure did. It's really not that hard to understand why Valve would not let someone remake a game that still hovers at around #50th place in Steam's most played games globally...
Nah, he's good
Except when they don't feel like it. See "Team Fortress: Source 2". https://www.shacknews.com/article/138260/team-fortress-source-2-cancelled-dmca
That's a lot harder...
Not just to design and come up with, but to get people to even try it.
The smart move is to make something like this, release your own game, then release the fan project which brings visibility to your original game.
lol “the smart move is to make 2 games before you release one”
No shit
Any other nuggets of wisdom? “The even smarter move is to make 3 games before you release one”?
ate the onion
Not really, the onion is good satire while your comment is hot garbage that you pretend is satire because you realized how asinine your original comment was.
The smarter move would have been to release the onion comment first then release your original comment after you had some upvotes.
Much like satire, usernames seem to be a challenging thing for ya. It's not my comment.
Sorry. Sometimes I do this thing where I treat people defending idiots like idiots themselves.
Nothing personal.
Totally. Not indicative of a total lack of both awareness and self awareness at all. I completely understand.
Woosh
You should probably understand the first one before moving on
Along with that, contribute to Free Software games instead of working for free to improve commercial for-profit ones.