Valve-VU settle dispute, HL2 to be pulled from shelves...

[cg84]

As part of the settlement agreement, Vivendi will cease distribution of retail packaged versions of Valve's games from 31 August, opening the way for Valve to sell its games exclusively via its Steam download service.

--gamesradar.com


that is just great, gabe. now dont blame me when i buy pirated copies of Aftermath and HL3.

[drvarunmehta]

Great going Valve. You just managed to kill 99% of your Indian market.

[NikhilVerma]

I don't know ... should I be happy or sad?!

They are trying to stop piracy the wrong way...

[Nemesis]

Not just the Indian market. They killed most of their market. Watch their hate mail rise. What will it take to knock into these guys that Steam sucks? Instead of dumping it, they decide to go exclusively with Steam. Never seen such idiots before. They make great games but have no common sense whatsoever.

[tarey_g]

the dispute was started before the release of hl2 , and something like this was going to happen , valve was not happy with vivendi's direct agreement of distribution of cs to cyber cafes.
both of them were claiming their right of the distribution , cs is very popular in cyber cafe communities and surely is big money.

[tarey_g]

Both companies shake hands and part ways


Valve and Vivendi Universal Games (VU Games) announced today in a rather terse press release that they have settled the suit filed by Valve nearly 3 years ago in August of 2002. This settlement has lead to an end of the longstanding and no doubt expensive legal dispute between the two companies, meaning a dismissal of all claims and counterclaims. Financial terms of the out-of-court settlement were not disclosed.

Despite the lack of any announcement on the fiscal exchange (if any) in the deal, the companies outlined the other terms of the agreement. VU Games will cease distribution of retail packaged versions of Valve's titles, such as Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source effective August 31, 2005. Furthermore, 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 cafes and grant cyber cafe licenses. Cyber cafe operators that were licensed by VU Games have also been notified that any license agreement from that company, Sierra Entertainment or any of their affiliates or distributors that may have granted rights to use Valve games in cyber cafes is hereby null and void.

It is unclear whether or not VU Games has retained the publishing duties for Half-Life 2 on Xbox. It is also unknown if Valve will eventually find another publisher or self publish its future titles.

Gamers

[gamefreak14]

What we are just about to witness is warez groups neatly repackage the online product and share it via P2P or FTPs...Valve is shooting themselves on the feet since a large number of people still don't have the patience/moolah to sit and download games. They have a feeling that they'll release games in the near future like mp3s a la itunes. Well, igames is never ever gonna work out, since everyone can't download a 4 GB distro when their HDD crashes. I can't believe that they chose this dumb route, even with a fully functional Steam emulator available for anyone to play without paying a dime. Look at the bright side...at least it won't feature Starforce 3 (splinter cell : CT yet to be cracked )

[icecoolz]

gamer...CT has indeed been cracked.. I have the link mate

Valve is just being silly. Like you said the scene will just repack it and release it. SixSteam still works absolutely great. They in no way will stop piracy nor even reduce it. This is just gonna push the legitimate game buyers away. One of the biggest disasters waiting to happen is Valve !!!

[ctrl_alt_del]

Sooner or later Valve will be forced to find a publisher. I don't think Steam will be able to keep them in black forever. I hope a huge public backlash forces them to see things from a different prespectives, one where the reality is low bandwidth, download caps, paper-money and stuff.

@Icecoolz: Nah mate, Starforce 3 hasen't been cracked yet. The link that you are talking about uses Starf*ck method of bypassing the softwares protection check by simply disbaling the optical drives. Alternatively, the CD images can be mounted on an external USB drive to make the game work. But even that is not a foolproof method to make a game protected with Starforce 3 work. Seems like many more games will follow suite and use Starforce 3.

Well enough said on off-topic. Lets get back to Valve bashing!

[Prashray]

When will Valve learn that Steam is not at all good?

[gamefreak14]

Originally Posted by ctrl_alt_del

Sooner or later Valve will be forced to find a publisher. I don't think Steam will be able to keep them in black forever. I hope a huge public backlash forces them to see things from a different prespectives, one where the reality is low bandwidth, download caps, paper-money and stuff.

Well...there won't be a backlash at all. Instead they'll be encouraged all the more by the wannabe 'techie' online community and this is what will drive them. It sounds and looks 'cool' to download games, the idiocy in it notwithstanding In the months to come, everyone in the states will be having 2MBps lines (UK = 8Mbps by december), while simple uncapped 256Kbps is considered a travesty by TRAI. They don't give a damn for us people. Which makes it logical to go the warez way. You know what the is most ironic? Valve games are the only games worth paying for. Save for the occasional one hit wonders, they are the only ones who give you true value for the 1500Rs you spend.

Originally Posted by icecoolz

gamer...CT has indeed been cracked.. I have the link mate

In addition to what cody said, Starforce generates a unique hardware id, which isn't exactly 'keygenable'. Ubisoft has encrypted every single file. Which means that this might follow the fate of Toca race driver 2 which took 8 (?) months to crack. Or Soldiers :Heroes of World war 2.

[Nemesis]

But you also have to consider the fact that not everyone will want to buy the games via electronic means, i.e., credit and debit cards. They will have to deal with that too. Also, we all know how bad the Steam servers were when we were installing HL2 the legit way. So is just decrypting was this hard, imagine downloading from these very servers. VALVE are gonna have a hard time no doubt. They might be forced into getting a publisher. Time will tell.