Valve and Vivendi Part Ways 55
IGN has news that the long running suit between Valve and Vivendi has finally been resolved. There has been some sort of settlement reached, the immediate result being that as of August 31st Vivendi will no longer be distributing Valve titles. From the article: "Valve has not announced a new publishing partner, or whether the company will now solely rely on Steam for distribution. A new publishing agreement would almost certainly be needed for the Xbox version of Half-Life 2 scheduled for release later this summer."
Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why can't Valve self-publish? Granted I know little about this arena, so I may be speaking directly from my posterior, but it doesn't seem hard. A disc press makes up 500 bazillion DVDs, and they usually do the case for it too, you provide the art. Then contract to a printer to print the boxes and manuals. Box and ship to wholesaler houses.
What does a "publisher" do except manage all that and take a good chunk of money for it? Sure for smaller firms they bankroll the project, but Valve probably has a few bucks to do this themselves. They put out a recent game that seems to be somewhat popular with the kids...
Re:WOW (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is great news (even though we've been expecting it for awhile). The nice thing is that now Valve can actually focus on their issues with Steam with all their resources as opposed to trying to deal with Vivendi. Hopefully this will also start a new erra of games being released without the silly rules of publishers getting in the way. HL2 probably would have been cheaper via steam than in the store if it hadn't been for Vivendi.
I for one would be more than happy to download (and burn myself) all the software I purchase if it meant saving some dollars. Not only that, but the actualy software company would probably see a lot more of the money for their software in this type of a model.
Congratulations Valve!
Yaaaaay! (Score:5, Interesting)
Onya Valve!