Valve Takes Action Against Team Fortress 2, Portal Fan Projects After Years of Leniency (gamesradar.com) 32
Dustin Bailey reports via GamesRadar: Valve has suddenly taken action against multiple fan games, stunning a fandom that had grown used to the company's freewheeling stance on unofficial community projects. One of those projects was Team Fortress: Source 2, an effort to bring the beloved multiplayer game back to life in a more modern engine using the S&box project. The project had already run into development difficulties and had essentially been on hiatus since September 2023, but now Valve has issued a DMCA takedown against it, effectively serving as the "nail in the coffin" for the project, as the devs explain on X. [...]
The other project is Portal 64, a demake of the 2009 puzzle game that ports it to run on an actual N64. Developer James Lambert had been working on the project for years, but it gained substantial notoriety this past December with the release of First Slice, a playable demo featuring the first 13 test chambers. It doesn't appear that Valve issued a formal DMCA against Portal 64, but the end result is the same. In a Patreon post (which was eventually made public on X), Lambert said he had "been in communication with Valve about the future of the project. There is some news and it isn't good. Because the project depends on Nintendo's proprietary libraries, they have asked me to take the project down."
I'm not fully clear on what "proprietary libraries" means here, but it seems likely that Portal 64 was developed using some variation of Nintendo's official development tools for N64, which were never officially released to the public. Open-source alternatives to those tools do exist, but might not have been in use here. [...] Given Valve's historic acceptance of fan games, the moves have been pretty shocking to the community.
The other project is Portal 64, a demake of the 2009 puzzle game that ports it to run on an actual N64. Developer James Lambert had been working on the project for years, but it gained substantial notoriety this past December with the release of First Slice, a playable demo featuring the first 13 test chambers. It doesn't appear that Valve issued a formal DMCA against Portal 64, but the end result is the same. In a Patreon post (which was eventually made public on X), Lambert said he had "been in communication with Valve about the future of the project. There is some news and it isn't good. Because the project depends on Nintendo's proprietary libraries, they have asked me to take the project down."
I'm not fully clear on what "proprietary libraries" means here, but it seems likely that Portal 64 was developed using some variation of Nintendo's official development tools for N64, which were never officially released to the public. Open-source alternatives to those tools do exist, but might not have been in use here. [...] Given Valve's historic acceptance of fan games, the moves have been pretty shocking to the community.
So much for TF3... (Score:3)
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"How dare you port this game to a dead system..." (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's the same mindset Hollywood has where they believe that they're somehow losing cinema ticket sales because people are able to pirate a potato quality cam recording of a film. They just hate the idea that someone is getting their IP for free, even if what they're getting for free is a pixelated blocky mess.
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That's great (Score:2)
Piss your fan base off, see where that gets you. Hoist the mainsail mates, it's time to go shark hunting.
So essentially.... (Score:2)
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Nintendo (Score:2)
I get that Nintendo can complain, but:
"Facepunch has not licensed any Valve assets for S@box. The unauthorized porting and redistributing of Valve's assets without a license violates Valve's IP."
That's Valve-on-Valve crime. How dumb, they should take a cut on their store.
Oh, well, I was going to pick up a card at Walmart but I'll skip it now. Not going to support that.
Not looking into details much (Score:5, Insightful)
The Portal64 project did not get a DMCA as far as anything I've read about it so far goes, but it was the result of the (almost certain) trouble that would come with using Nintendo proprietary code without permission too (granted, getting permission from Nintendo is probably quite hard at this point).
I'll agree that the current IP system, especially regarding old, unmaintained games and content, is troublesome. But as it is right now, I find it hard to infer "Valve will DMCA everything under the sun" from these cases.
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That Nintendo code is over 25 years old.
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A computer program is considered a literary work, and a 27 year old literary work is still fairly new. It's not even one-third of the way through its nominal life.
Re:Not looking into details much (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree this is a very inflammatory headline. I don't think Valve is being unreasonable here.
And it should be mentioned that while these games are old, they are certainly not unmaintained and still have an active player base.
Portal: last update, January 5, 2024 (6 days ago)
Team Fortress 2: last update, January 9, 2024 (2 days ago)
That, and the fan-made Portal mod "Portal Revolution" was just released last week on Steam. It provides a new story and 40 puzzles built in the Source engine using Portal assets. It's awesome. Fan-made Valve addons are certainly alive and well, but don't just steal their assets and try to make a sequel, please...
libultra (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not fully clear on what "proprietary libraries" means here, but it seems likely that Portal 64 was developed using some variation of Nintendo's official development tools for N64
Except for machine code demos, all commercial games and most hobby projects use Nintendo's libultra [n64brew.dev] as essentially an "operating system" jammed into a lib.
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If I had to guess, the issue Valve has is probably the N64's proprietary IPL3 which is stored on the game carts and is used to train and initialize the RDRAM (main system memory & expansion pak memory).
There's still an open issue for IPL3 to be reimplemented on libdragon's issue tracker. [github.com]
TL;DR: Until that issue is fixed, the only way a game (OSS or otherwise) can boot on real hardware is by using Nin
Meanwhile (Score:2)
Valve refuses to support their existing Team Fortess 2 product in any meaningful way. Nobody would be trying to port the game to Source 2 if Valve would take care of their own product which stupidly still makes them money. Clueless fans keep buying keys for a game that has been taken over by catbots.
Will Valve port TF2 to Source 2 like they did with Counter Strike and Defense of the Ancients 2? No!
Maybe Valve should un-abandon their games. (Score:2)
Seriously... what has Valve even done lately besides suckle their 30% from the teat of Steam and other peoples' work? Okay, every few years they'll dump some innuendo into the rumor mill to tease us. But aside from that one VR tech demo with Alyx a few years back, it's been a whole lot nothing delivered. No Half Life 3, no Episode 3, no Portal 3, no Left for Dead 3, no Half Life / Portal crossover as teased in the games, no Gordon, no GLaDOS, no new franchsises, no... well... nothing... just the occasion