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First Person Shooters (Games) Businesses

EA To Publish for Valve 86

Posted by Zonk from the quite-the-turnaround dept.
Primotech writes "It appears that Valve has secured EA as its new publisher. When the developer settled its lawsuit with Vivendi back in April, the company was left without a publisher to distribute boxed copies of its games. The company has tapped EA, which will publish and release Half-Life 2: Game of the Year Edition and Half-Life 2 for the Xbox sometime this year. From the article: 'EA is the worldwide leader in bringing best of breed games, for all platforms, to market...By combining EA's unparalleled operation structure and distribution channel with Valve's award-winning development teams and games community, we've established an awesome combination for delivering great products to console and PC gamers around the world.'"
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EA To Publish for Valve More

EA To Publish for Valve

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  • Oh well. Let the conspiracy circus begin!
    • Con-spir-a-cy [reference.com] n.
      1. An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
      2. A group of conspirators.
      3. Law. An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.
      4. A joining or acting together, as if by sinister design: a conspiracy of wind and tide that devastated coastal areas.

      ...at first I thought conspiracy was a bad choice of words, but upon further inspection it seems perfect ;)

      • at first I thought conspiracy was a bad choice of words

        I thought "cons-piracy" meant widespread prohibited copying of Lisp compilers.

  • Contract? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nos. ( 179609 ) <andrewNO@SPAMthekerrs.ca> on Monday July 18, 2005 @06:02PM (#13098348) Homepage
    What I wouldn't give to see the contents of this contract. Since Valve really wanted to be able to distrubte electronically and bypass a publisher, I would imagine that's in their somewhere. Still, I think any publisher could make a lot of money still of HL2. Lets face it, there's still mods coming (DoD) and with an XBox version on its way, store shelves will be packed again with HL2 boxes.

    • Re:Contract? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by HD Webdev ( 247266 )
      What I wouldn't give to see the contents of this contract. Since Valve really wanted to be able to distrubte electronically and bypass a publisher, I would imagine that's in their somewhere. Still, I think any publisher could make a lot of money still of HL2. Lets face it, there's still mods coming (DoD) and with an XBox version on its way, store shelves will be packed again with HL2 boxes.

      As far as Steam online distribution, I'm sure that matter is very detailed in the contract by Valve. Valve just fi
      • IMO, EA will cash in on the console distribution mostly. After all, the PC distribution may be a loss in the long run. Once an EA/Steam game is installed, Valve will be able to sell more games directly to those PC players and that's a loss of future EA sales.
        Or EA can end this painful boycott by releasing a non-steam version.

        Please. Take my money. Just detach the strings from your product.

  • How does this affect their Steam sales though? As long as I can buy my games directly from Valve, I don't have to contribute to the EA juggernaut ;)
  • This is terrible, potenetially. I hope Valve was hard-nosed during negotiations, otherwise $EA$ will be pushing unfinished crap out for unrealistic deadlines. Anyone following what they did AGAIN with the battlefield series is shuddering at the thought of there slimy finger all over a nice game like HL2
    • Ahhh, EA...how that company releases so many top-notch games but manages to make them all somehow less than they should be blows my mind.

      I loved Need for Speed Underground on my Gamecube...except when it locked up.
      I loved Battlefield 1942...except for the problems too numerous to list here which mostly got fixed eventually.
      I'm currently loving TimeSplitters: Future Perfect on my Gamecube except for its lockups.

      Who the hell besides EA releases a console game that isn't totall stable?!?!
      • Do you people even understand the difference between publishing and developing?

        No?

        Maybe I should know better than to expect ignorance to be an obstacle to posting on Slashdot.
        • No, I don't know how the games industry works, but I do recognize patterns. That's 3 games published recently by EA that by all other measures are excellent games, but came with awful flaws. Consider EA's the hand of doom.

        • Re:I hope Valve was hard-nosed (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Elshar ( 232380 ) <elshar&gmail,com> on Monday July 18, 2005 @06:36PM (#13098612) Journal

          I think you misunderstand the problem. Its more akin to a writer being forced by their editor/publisher to release a work that's still in between a rough draft and a final draft. That, and with the publishers seemingly able to stipulate odd requirements for patches make it really hard for the developers to even publicly fix issues sometimes. (I seem to remember this being the case with atari/moo3)

        • Re:I hope Valve was hard-nosed (Score:5, Interesting)

          by daVinci1980 ( 73174 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @11:19PM (#13100582) Homepage
          You apparently do not have any inkling how the game industry works. Allow me to enlighten you, young padawan. (Either you don't work in the game industry, or you're very new if you do. Or you don't keep up with the industry rags, at least).

          In the game industry, there are two (basic) types of developers. First party developers (that would be, developers who are actually just a branch within the publisher) and third party developers (who are working with a publisher via a contract).

          I've worked for both--including the evil empire. The bottom line is that in the end, the publisher is law. Regardless of whether you are a first or third party developer, the publisher's QA department has to sign off on a title before it is released. When a product is realeased before it is ready, it is the publisher's fault--and was most likely the publisher's decision. In the case of PCs, there is at least some forgiveness for releasing games that have various bugs; due to the nature of PC hardware (and the nearly infinite combinations of video cards, sound cards, motherboards, RAM, drivers for all of the aforementioned, etc, etc, etc), it is almost certain that there will be at least one person whose machine is incapable of playing your title. However, a console is a fixed target. There is no excuse for all but the rarest of hangs. The memory allocations should even always shake out the same way, for chrissake. The thread switches--should your title use threads at all--are deterministic for the same sets of user inputs.

          And incidentally, in the case of the three titles mentioned above, both NFSU and BF2 where developed first party by EA. (DICe was purchased by EA after the success of BF1942). The publisher was the developer in this case.

          As far as the topic at hand, I'm neither here nor there. On the one hand, it saddens me that yet another talented studio has signed with the evil empire. (I imagine in 5-10 years that the other publishers will be gone or will form together to sue EA for monopolistic practices). On the other hand, I haven't played HL2 because I disagree fundamentally with a copy protection scheme that phones home even when I play single player.
    • As others said before me, Valve is in a much stronger position than most developers. Half-Life is hugely popular and if EA does not want the deal, others might be happy to jump in.
      Thus, I guess you won't have to worry about EA dictating terms to Valve.
  • Why didn't Valve go with someone respectable, like Activision? I'm sure they have their share of issues, but they're nothing like EA. Or am I wrong about this?
    • Why they went with ANYONE is beyond me. I thought Steam would have been a great way for them to be publisher-less.

      • Re:Um, what? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by LocoMan ( 744414 )
        Maybe they didn't want to mess with the other things publishers do (advertising and the like)... or maybe just didn't have enough money to fund complete development of their next game (since games, like movies, don't start to bring in money until they're released).

      • Re:Um, what? (Score:3, Informative)

        by jonwil ( 467024 )
        Firstly, they need a publisher for the X-Box version (presumably the fact that they went with EA means that they couldnt or didnt want to self-publish this)
        And secondly they need a publisher to get copies of things like expansions, mods (and also the eventual Half-Life 3) onto store shelves (not everyone is prepared/able to buy HL2 from Steam)
    • Funny, +1
    • "why didn't they go with someone responsible like Activision?" Activision publishes just enought to barely survive, let me rephrase. Activision has a crap to good ratio that barely keeps them alive. They publish bad games. Valve is smart, they had to have made it their handle on the leash if they were to go with EA. They'll release when they want, what they want. EA will though, be making a hefty amount of cash off this. Why didn't Valve go back to MS?
  • Maybe EA will learn a few things about online implementation from Valve, rather than stick to this GameSpy travesty that haunts Battlefield 2 at the moment. Favorite servers, history, friends network...even though some of these don't work at all, they are features sorely missed in BF2.
    • If you Google and tinker with files for an hour or two you may be able to get it to work.

      For the rest of us who just want to click and play you see

      Signing into the Friends network.
      Signing into the Friends network..
      Signing into the Friends network...
      Signing into the Friends network....
      Signing into the Friends network.....
      Signing into the Friends network......
    • This has always puzzled me about the Battlefield series. They all have substandard server browsers, yet the one in Neverwinter Nights, which is also powered by GameSpy, has favorites, history, friend tracking, and even chat. Is GameSpy the problem, or is EA/DICE the problem?
      • considering that the BF:Vietnam server browser was completely broken in the shipping version, and the fact that every single DICE game since BF:1942 has had the worst menu & server browser systems EVER, i would hazard a guess that it's a DICE problem, not EA...

        BF:Vietnams 'sort by ping' feature was flat-out BROKEN - how did this get past EA's mighty quality assurance - seriously HOW?

        Quite possibly the MOST used server browser feature - aside from perhaps the 'update' button, which barely worked at the
        • BF1942's game browser had stupid bugs as well - before one of the recent patches, if you filtered on a map name with a space in it, it would ignore any text after the space. So filtering on "Battle of Britain" would match "Battle of the bulge" as well.
    • The browser is indeed awful. I guess the problems weren't picked up until the game was rolled out in to the wilds of the internet.

      One good thing introduced with 1.01/02, however, is that you can now launch games via an external server browser like All Seeing Eye [yahoo.com]. You can then filter the servers properly, and connect to games a hell of a lot easier.

      It can't filter out smacktard commanders tho. pity.

  • EA is just as bad as Vivendi (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grumpygrodyguy ( 603716 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @06:25PM (#13098527)
    EA is the worldwide leader in bringing best of breed games, for all platforms, to market

    Sorry, but that's total bs. As much as I loath Vivendi, EA is right up there with them. If you go to a store and pay $50 for Battlefield 2(an EA title) and install it, you will learn that you can't play online unless you completely uninstall all CD emulation/burning software on your computer.

    Most slashdot gamers are PC professionals with dozens of utility programs like these installed on their computers. Utilities they need in order to use their PC the way they want. Insisting on the permanent uninstallation of these applications is an arrogant intrusion on the part of EA.

    I'm infuriated because I bought this game fair and square and I can't play without a nocd crack. Some of you might suggest I just return the game, but it's a great game and I want to support the developers because they did such a great job...but I'm done throwing money into EAs coffers who screw their customers into altering their PC just to satisfy their draconion copy-protection scheme.

    I will certainly be getting my next Valve title through steam however, and not through EA's handcuffs in a box. I just hope that in the future, Steam or another service like it will be able to distribute all PC titles through the internet, so we can finally get rid of these price inflating middle-men.
    • Thats a complete lie. Ive got daemon tools/alcohol 120% and a few others installed and I did NOT have to untinstall them to get bf2 to install.

      • Re:EA is just as bad as Vivendi (Score:5, Insightful)

        by grumpygrodyguy ( 603716 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @06:35PM (#13098597)
        Thats a complete lie. Ive got daemon tools/alcohol 120% and a few others installed and I did NOT have to untinstall them to get bf2 to install.

        The error message the game gives you doesn't tell you the name of the offending program. It says something like '...uninstall all CD emulation software...'. Some tools package both emulation and ripping into the same tool set. So the already pissed customer has to keep uninstalling software one program at a time until it magically starts working.

        Something like that should be grounds for a class action suit. I know people love to say 'read the EULA', but how long until the average EULA takes 20 days just to read and understand? It's more akin to entrapment than an agreement.
        • The EULA is a mess, in most cases.

          You've got to agree to it before you play yet you can't actually read it until you've bought the product, installed it, and rendered it unreturnable because it's been opened?

          Sounds great to me!

      • Perhaps it depends what CD/DVD burning apps you have installed. I currently have around 7 on my machine, and I'd be curious to see what this game complains about specifically.
    • Gamers need to be on the watch out for EA and other publishers who could try to form some kind of GPAA--we're already hearing the same story of "I want to support the artists (read developers), but I know the money just goes to the labels/whatever (read publishers)." Now they're trying to control how their product is distributed at the device level (barring CD emulators).

      • Gamers need to be on the watch out for EA and other publishers who could try to form some kind of GPAA

        You mean "Game Publishers Association of America"? In that case, there is no try [theesa.com].

        • I wonder why we don't hear so much about this ESA's anti-piracy bit? Glancing at that site, it looks like they're at least a little active--coordination or whatever of a raid in Mexico, and the like.

          Are they less visible because they aren't litigating as hard as, say, the RIAA, or because they aren't lobbying so hard? Are they lobbing _smarter_ so that we don't hear so much about it?

          ... Maybe they just don't have enough A-s to be nasty yet.
    • That's utter bullshit. I have 4+ cd/dvd burning programs on my computer, daemon tools, and a few other programs that would probably fall into those catagories and BF2 gave me no problems installing what so ever.

    • I'm running Alcohol 120% and get no problems.
    • I had this issue - the culprit was CloneDVD.

      Alc120% was okay...
  • God forbid, could it really be, a version of HL2 that doesn't require logging on to Steam? I'd buy that for a dollar!

    Or are they going to require your Xbox to be hooked up to Xbox Live to play? Oh that would be deliciously evil, as Stewie says.
  • All EA is doing is distributing the game through very well established channels to the retailers. The game will probably get prime space on the shelves/kiosks, and sell more copies...good for players and good for valve.

    This actually has the potential to be the first EA news that /. can think positively of...yeah, what the hell was I thinking.

  • "We had ea-games when we were kids, too, but we called them 'video' games."

    Ugh.

  • Thanks Valve you JUST lost a sale. If you'd not pulled something this fucking retarded I would of bought the HL2 expansion, now I won't.

    Thanks you saved me money :)

  • Distributing -- NOT Publishing (Score:4, Informative)

    by Toddarooski ( 12363 ) on Monday July 18, 2005 @08:57PM (#13099811)
    According to GameSpot [gamespot.com], Valve is self-publishing the title. EA is only distributing the game (i.e. using their contacts to get their games into stores like Toys R Us and Target). That's it. Nothing to freak out about.
  • People who've poked through the battlefield 2 found the original interface menus. These had all the core features expected of a multiplayer game interface, as well as a whole tree for clan-specific functions! Everyone who owns BF2 can vouch for the "Boost" button in the Land controls. Did you guys ever realize that there is no vehicle that uses this button? Ayup that's right, it's a key for vehicles that were never put in the game. They didn't have time to remove the key from the key configuration menu app
    • I don't know why we expected anything different from BF2, really. Does anyone remember the problems with BF1942 when it was first released? Random disconnections, broken game browser, hundreds of bugs and crashes.

      EA did the usual thing of spouting crappy troubleshooting ideas like forwarding ports or changing MTUs until they could get a patch ready. IIRC, it was many months before it was actually stable - after about four patches.

      This just seems to be par for the course in PC gaming: promise the world, fe
    • Didn't you hear! They're changing the game completely with the expansion. They're adding such innovative things such as a device known as a "grappling hook" (which will allow you to grapple onto a building and climb/zipline towards it) along with an ultra-realistic, never before seen in games "night vision goggles." With the inclusion of ultra-tall buildings to scale, and night time maps with REAL darkness - these items promise to change the way we see gaming forever.

      After the news about this expansion was
  • "EA has secured Valve as its new cash cow." EA will bleed them dry like every other development house then toss em into the ocean with all the rest.
  • "delivering great products to console and PC gamers around the world."

    how about not handcuffing your customers, not calling them thieves and unloading DRM crippled crap on them.

    frankly hl2 is one of the worst games of all time.

    what? you say that i've never played the game?

    true.

    but as steam is inseperable from hl2, then my opinion stands.

    legally and out of the box, steam is as part of hl2 as the engine and physics.

    i was looking forward to this game (and i'm not even a fan of HL) but they lost me as a

    • Re:if only... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Valve pretty soon realised that they had to abandon the DRM/CD copy protection stuff, and they did. Steam works smoothly: updates are automatically downlaoded (no searching on some filemirrors anymore where you have to create an account etc), the game can be played from different computers without having to enter a 20-digit serial no etc. "Pure garbag", "intentionally crippled": it may have not perfect from the start, but for me it is.
      • But you still depend on valve keeping Steam running. If they ever shut it down, the offline modus will reportedly only work for a limited time. For me that is reason enough not to buy HL2 at full price.
        If I see it on the rummage table for 10 euros some day, however, I might get it.
  • Valve, you too will be assimilated by the Borg...
  • What hath Gabe wrought?

    (for future reference of ya'll, /.'s Lameness filter blocks morse code)
  • What a bunch of whiny bitches.

    Waaah, HL2 has Steam...

    Waaah, BF2 won't let me play with X installed...

    Waaah, "They aren't getting MY money!"

    Waaah, "I'M NOT..."

    Here is a clue: we are talking about games. Sure it's an interesting subject, but in the end, it's just a game. You don't want to play BF2 because your neighbor's friend's brother told you he had lag? You think Valve is spying on you with Steam? Too bad for you.

    The reality is, HL2 and BF2 are 2 of the best games I've played in a long time.

  • Steam, or EA? The decision is *cough* obvious (Score:3, Interesting)

    by i_ate_god ( 899684 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @08:14PM (#13109192)
    Thats the message I'm getting here. People hate steam because it prevents them from what exactly?

    Oh right, being able to properly pirate a game and show Valve they don't give a shit.

    HL2 by anyone's standards is a high calibre game. Even if you don't like FPS, there is no question about it. The attention to detail and the sheer power of the Source engine are mind blowing. Of course, these things take time and money to develope. I for one am grateful that Steam exists. It's so much better than any other possible method of protecting Valve's IP. For starters, it didn't require any hardware changes. It doesn't require an internet connection. It doesn't require a dongle. It doesn't really require anything at all.

    For those who obviously don't know, Steam can and will work in an Offline mode. It will allow you to play HL2 single player, single player mods, and allows you to work on your mods and maps with the Source SDK. Don't tell me it doesn't, because it does. I lost internet for two weeks and the only thing that prevented me from committing mass murder and subsequently suicide was still being able to work on my Source mod, and still being able to play HL2 to see how Valve did certain effects.

    I can not figure out for the life of me why some people are just so paranoid about steam calling home. It is a reasonable measure taken to protect valve's prized work and to ensure that there is a steady cash flow to Valve so that they can outdo themselves, again. Luckily, I do not have to look forward to idiotic DRM concepts that are not consumer friendly. I don't need a dongle, I don't need special hardware, I don't even need a CD. I don't even need to visit a store. And most importantly, I do not need to give EA money.

    There seems to be a great deal of ungratefulness for this ease of use with Steam. It's almost like the mere mention of a company that wants to protect its works is now branded evil, even when they do it the easiest way possible. And naturally, all hatred and complaints come with absolutely no suggestion for an alternative.

    There is another huge advantage to Steam that many people have overlooked. It allows Valve to implement very strict anti cheating measures. If you cheat, your copy of HL2 becomes INVALID and there is nothing you can do about it. I applaud this measure. It's impossible to fake your cd key with steam, so the arguement that "well, someone else did it" fails because that is solely your responsibility. And even if you are busted for cheating, you can STILL login to Steam, and STILL play online, just on insecure servers that don't implement VAC, which is more generous than I would've been. CS 1.5 was plagued by hackers, and there was little Valve could do about it. Now they much more control over it.

    So all in all, the complaints about steam are unfounded, illogical, and demonstrates a great deal of ignorance and unfounded paranoia by the people who are against it.
    • I think most of the people are paranoid because they don't want valve to find out about all the "less then legal" stuff they have on their computers :-).

      But in all honesty, the calling thing did put me off for a second. People do seem to guard their privacy hardcore and having "steam call home" can be looked at as violating that privacy. I quickly forgot about it however when I played HL2. :-)

      I agree with you in the fact that , yes, Valve is only protecting their hard work, but, I think they can figure
      • What is the worst that can happen when Steam calls home? It sends over your ip address, your email you used for steam, and your password. OH MY FUCKING GOD THE GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO KIIL ME NOW. Give me a break. That is not a violation of privacy in any way whatsoever. It is not obstrusive, and will almost likely never be used against you except to cancel your steam account for doing something stupid with it. With this type of thinking, I'm surprised privacy nazis don't just lead a campaign against the

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