The creator of one of Steam's most iconic games says the company's decision to issue copyright strikes against two fan projects is "hardly surprising."
Garry Newman, creator of physics sandbox Garry's Mod, has taken to Twitter in the wake of Valve's decision to issue DMCA takedown notices against two fanmade games. The first is Team Fortress: Source 2, a project that was allowed to use Valve's Source 2 engine, but not its intellectual property. The second was Portal 64, which Valve asked its creator to take down over apparent concerns about the use of Nintendo technology that isn't in the public domain.
I think while it's maybe out of character for Valve to take down fan projects like this, it's hardly surprising when you have their entire game uploaded. I somehow don't think the "old Valve" would have let anyone port Half-Life to another engine and host it all publicly either.… https://t.co/GMPedl7KdIJanuary 11, 2024
It's not often that Valve takes this kind of approach. Historically, the studio has been very welcoming of mods and fan-games; there are a number of unofficial, fan-made Half-Life spin-offs listed - for real money - on Steam. As a result, some fans have suggested that its actions here are unwarranted, but Newman has hit back at that.
"I think while it's maybe out of character for Valve to take down fan projects like this, it's hardly surprising when you have their entire game uploaded." Team Fortress: Source 2 was a near-complete remake of a game that Valve does still monetize, even if TF2 fans have suffered plenty over the past few years. With that in mind, Newman points out that "I don't think the 'old Valve' would have let anyone port Half-Life to another engine and host it all publicly either."
He goes on to explain that S&box, an engine built out of Source 2 and designed as a spiritual successor of Garry's Mod, might have been used to create the Team Fortress port, but "S&box doesn't have a license to use Valve's content, only the engine." The decision to only license the engine, rather than the content, was a financial one - Newman explains that "we didn't want to commit a chunk of profit so early in development when we don't even know what the final product will look like."
Regardless of Valve's actions, Team Fortress: Source 2 was about to become defunct anyway. Changes to S&box were about to make the game's code "unusable," and the DMCA is described as "the nail in the coffin." It might have been considered 'out of character' for Valve, but it seems likely that in this instance, the strike has simply resulted in the project being taken down a few days early. That might not bring this in line with the mythical 'old Valve' that some fans wish would make a return, but it does mean that Valve likely isn't entirely to blame for the death of these projects.
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