Slashdot Mirror
Valve Bullying Cybercafes Over Licensing?
The Importance of writes "Yesterday, as mentioned on Slashdot, Valve announced arrests relating to the theft of Half-Life 2 code. Gabe Newell, Valve's CEO, was quoted as saying, 'Everyone here at Valve is once again reminded of how much we owe to the gaming community.' Demonstrating its appreciation of the gaming community, Valve also threatened to sue a cybercafe offering Counter-Strike without the correct licensing. This may sound fair enough, but while companies like Microsoft allow cybercafes the right to offer games as long as they buy each copy of the games they use, Valve has what are generally considered the worst cybercafe licensing terms there are. Moreover, instead of merely sending a cease and desist letter ('knock it off or we will sue'), Valve sent a ' pay us big bucks for a license or we'll sue letter'. In other words, unless the cybercafe prepays for a one-year license starting at the time the letter was received, they will be sued."
This guy is running a business for Christ's sake. He should have known the score beforehand. The fact that this person is ignoring the legal side of things while running a business is stupid no matter how you look at it.
Frankly, I don't feel sympathetic for this person at all. They're running a cybercafe; getting the licensing issues out of the way should be top priority for them before they allow the game to be played. That "poor, pitiful me" shit doesn't fly here. If they didn't know the ins and outs of their business before they got in it, they shouldn't be in it now.
Valve did no wrong here. Hopefully something good will come out of this; Valve will show this person that they should stick to being an employee.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
and CAN they demand it(so that it would go through in court)?
of course, it's not like they've yet gotten the deserved amount of money from half-life 1 yet so it's perfectly reasonable. not.
also, there's numerous cases where people who have bought brand new copies(in plastic) of half-life to get to play cs and only to notice that the key is already in use(there's some keygens you can use to brute force to find a working online key.. I'm guessing thats whats happening) - probably the half-life's key system was never intended to be in so widespread use it is now and as a consequence the customers get stuffed..
(not to mention how bad the online gameplay experience with cs can be nowadays.. *cough* wallhack *cough* aim-enhancer *cough* )
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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Just because Valve makes great games on their own time frame and has a huge community of players making mods and continually playing their 5+ year old games doesn't mean they aren't a money grubbing company.
Some people seem to forget that they are in the money making business, and being the company that made Counter-Strike, they will probably milk that license until something threatens to dethrone it.
I wish that I could say that Valve is in the wrong on this one, but they can charge whatever they want to let companies commercially profit from their games.
So, the question is, is this news? Or is it incredibly appropriate and just more free press for Valve with the inevitable release of Half-Life 2? I mean the story "Valve tells CyberCafe that fucked up to pay them money for using their product irresponsibly" isn't exactly newsworthy.... Cease and Desists are merely the respectable way (and somewhat traditional way) to go about things. But, IANAL and might just me missing the point completely. So tag me as flamebait appropriately.
schild
editor, f13.net
Maybe, but Valve produces something people actually want. SCO on the other hand...
Spoon!
Since I'm about to open a game center this month, I have been following this issue closely. Valve has always been a sketchy company. They offer poor to non-existant support for their products. Their products run poorly (anyone use Steam lately?). As for licensing, they have been backtracking and restating information about the license program. After seeing all this, I refused to carry Valve games.
As for other centers... Intially when Valve came out with the new license, everyone found it ridiculous and continued running their centers as usual. A few spokesmen for Valve said that if they continued with the licensing scheme, they would issue cease and desist orders to any center using their games and not paying the license fees. So game centers would be allowed to remove the games to avoid legal action. Most game centers figured they would continue running the games and, in the worst case, be forced to remove the games.
A year or so went by with no change in Valves statements about enforcing the licenses.
Valve suddenly decides, out of the blue, to issue lawsuits to all game centers with CS. Instead of issuing the cease and desist order like they said though, they decided to force game centers to pay for a yearly license. That's about $2400-$3000 up front. That's painfully difficult for most game centers which barely break even. A typical game center makes around $500 a month in profit. 99% of game centers are mom & pop shops run by 1 person and 2-3 employees. They generate little income.
Personally, I think Valve downplayed the licensing issue to get as many centers using their software as possible. Then they attacked all the centers to force them to pay license fees or be sued out of existance. Kind of like MS's policy of allowing foreign countries to pirate their software. Then when lots of people have the software, threaten legal action and create a huge new revenue stream. I am no longer supporting Valve products.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Of course, in case you didn't know they're actually a SCO daughter company and their strategy blueprients are created by runing a sophisticated search-and-replace macro on SCO's Word documents!
What the hell are you talking about?
WTF are they supposed to do?
Give Half Life away and sell support?
Of course they should be able to sue ass off people who violate their licensing terms.
If anyone doesn't like to pay for the license, they can download a free Tetris, buy some other game or whatever. Who cares?
I'm not a gamer, but I do write software for a living.
At the end of the day, the guy used their software (which they paid for) in order to run his business and make money. I assume that no-one forced him to do this and that using this software was deemed to be beneficial to his business.
Why did he use this software without a license? Why is he any different from a any software pirate? Why shouldn't the publishers demand payment?
Both the cafe owner and the publisher are in the business of making money. If I were to set up a car sales (say) business in your front garden, thereby using your property, wouldn't you either sue me or demand payment for that use of your property? What is wrong with people who think that they should be able to use software in contravention of licensing terms with impunity?
Now, I've read a number of comments in this thread stating that Valve have awkward licensing terms and that they didn't write Counter Strike. However, the first point is up to them and may be stupid business. They are allowed to be stupid and ignore possible customers. Those possible customers who don't like the terms of their business are not allowed to use it regardless. They have the choice to not use it if they don't like the terms, not to make up their own terms.
The second point, as I understand it, is true, but that CS uses their games engine. In such a case I would believe (unless there are daft licences regarding development that uses their engine) that anyone could use the CS code as they wished, so long as they didn't use the games engine. If their effort is so inconsequential as to be disregarded, then some of the whingers should do what the rest of us Open Source supporters do and get off their backsides and write a comparable engine. (Let me know if I'm wrong on these 'facts', I only have the preceeding comments to go by)
At the end of the day this comes down to people making a living and the rights of license holders to enforce the terms underwhich the fruit of their efforts are to be allowed to be used by others. This is the same whether code is Open Source or Commercial.
http://www.battlegroundpcgaming.com/
Apparently he thought that just buying the games from a shop would have been enough. *bzzz* wrong in this case. on top of it valve didn't originally have this licensing scheme in place(I'd suppose they didn't even except half-life to grow so fast due to a community made mod named counter-strike), instead, they have instituted this later(changed the 'contract' afterwards the 'deal' was made to purely their beneficiary).
I don't suppose you sell your programs to people with a license to use them and then when they get widespread(legal) usage you tell them that hey, you have to pay yearly for that! - this was what I was disputing of being possibly non enforceable by them.
In the end of the day they are allowed to be stupid, true, but that doesn't make it right either. They have to make some unbeliviable progress with cs2 and hl2 to keep their community on the level it used to be(cs community is already breaking into shards because of widespread cheating and the engines total inability to cope with it)..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Valve is not a charity organization after all and I say good for them. The problem is that this I-Cafe has been making a profit from Valves hard work (however old this work may be) and I think that it is only fair that Valve gets renumeration for the work they did.
As for all the people flaming Valve I ask you, if you were running a business and you find out that somebody is making a profit off your sweat and blood while your getting *zip* what would you guys have to say about it?
I sure has hell would not be happy about it.
Havin' it large, livin' the life, Welcome to the land of the rising sun.
Valve owns Counter-Strike. They bought it, and now have the legal rights to do whatever they wish to it. At this point, I would say that Valve has probably rewritten most of the original code that was once in Counter-Strike. With that said, is the licensing just? Maybe not, Valve should refund all the cybercafe's the money that they spent on the boxed items.
Although, the cybercafe program that Valve has allows all of the Valve's games to be playable for $9/month (per computer)... unless it's been recently changed (I don't have the time [or need] to go check the Steam website). Alot of these cybercafes make more than that per computer, especially coming into the summer season. Tournaments are another thing - more money, more publicity.
I'm f#$king magic!
so what? microsoft owns rights to windows95 and they can't just tell people that "if you use this in a kiosk you must pay upfront umpteen thousand dollars or we'll sue".
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It's still so ridiculously small revenue stream for valve that they would be better off not harassing people.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...is that this cyber-cafe has legal copies of CS and HL. However, Valve's license doesn't allow you to make money from your use of HL or the HL engine (imagine if MS did this with Windows or Office). Since the cyber-cafe charged people to play the games, they are in violation of Valve's license. Valve has every right to do this. However, the cyber-cafe has probably already given Valve thousands of dollars by purchasing HL for each of the computers. Is this any way to treat one of your better customers? I only bought one copy of HL. This cyber-cafe bought dozens. Consequently, I will no longer be supporting Valve by playing their games. The same is true for any company that expects me to pay $50+ to use (not own) a copy of software they wrote, and they won't even let me run it on my favorite OS.
In the world of commercial game licensing Valve stands alone for being one of the most difficult and unreasonable developers. Valve is inflexible, unwilling to listen, unwilling to compromise, and shrill in their approach to game centers; the same game centers that are responsible for keeping for so many years the interest of players in their jewel game: Counterstrike. A game center is a powerful tool for developers and publishers to deliver their content directly to the customers who matter most: gamers. Many game publishers understand the strength and penetration of this marketing channel and have developed commercial use policies that are much more favorable to game centers. Their policies serve to promote their games and create an environment where game centers are enticed to continue to support the games and the customers' interests by facilitating a variety of competitive events on local, regional, and national levels.
Operating a gaming center is no small task. There is no single-point licensing scheme like there is in music industry. The variety of fragmented game licensing schemes makes for a difficult operating environment and drives up overhead. If Valve succeeds in forcing game centers to pay unreasonable fees to use their software, how long will it take for the other publishers to demand the same thing? Imagine each publisher demanding $3000/year for a game title. If an average gaming center carries only 10 game titles, the total price for just making the games available to the customers will be a staggering $30,000/year. What if there are 20 titles? That's $60,000/year! Most gaming centers don't see that kind of money in an entire year. Forcing game centers to pay these fees will most certainly destroy the gaming center industry in the United States.
umm, let me get this right. 9 bucks, per PC, per month. That is NOT a lot of cash. If it was too much for this particular business to afford, I suspect they have trouble meeting their other obligations. If they failed to purchase legitimate licenses for the software they are using to generate income, then Valve is being very generous in giving tham an amnesty. What would Micro$oft or say, SCO do in this circumstance?
"Small business forced to pay its' bills. Film at eleven!" - hardly material for a FPP...
If they have attempted to change the licenses retrospectively, then they are well and truly in the wrong. In such a case I would expect that their terms are unenforcable and may open them to possible litigation in return.
However, if the cafe owner was using the software for a purpose that wasn't specifically allowed then he may possibly have problems. While IANAL it is not too large a stretch to compare the sofware's use in a cafe with a software rental company where special licensing terms are usually required. Maybe someone is making such a stretch.
Does anyone have any more detailed information on the case and possibly links to copies of the licenses that applied?
IANAL but valves license is probably illegal. There is little difference between what valve is trying to do and what the RIAA has tried to do unsuccessfully to restaurants.
If you own a restaurant you can go 2 ways about putting music in your business. You can buy home equipment, CD's and a radio receiver, or you can purchase commercial equipment. If you take the first route you pay once and never a licensing fee. If you take the second you pay the terms the RIAA dictates.
The reason for the difference in licensing terms is some large restaurant chains were able to mount the legal fight and get what is obviously fair use declared fair use by the courts. If the cafe isn't carging specificaly for the game, they are well within fair use. The problem here is that valve is large relative to the cybercafes. Patent and Copyright litigation costs can easily escalate. As Don Lancaster used to say "If you have a only a million dollar idea it doesn't pay to patent it."
Once again this demonstrates the real problem with our legal system. The idea that right makes might, when in fact its more often money that buys might.
Get over it - valve did NOT make counter-strike. Yes they bought it after a year or so of development and many many releases, but the game and the core gameplay system that apparently STILL is going to be used in the half-life 2 game as multiplayer (including the exact same animations and voice samples) was created by a team of volunteers, NOT employees.
;}
Their reward for creating the greatest online game ever? Millions of dollars maybe?
No, valve APPRECIATES gamers, really they do - these lucky folks, in exchange for creating Counter-strike and the VERY REASON THAT VALVE IS SO SUCCESSFUL - what do they get?
They get to be grunts at Valve! Isnt that just special...
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The only thing the cybercafe would need to run CS is a valid half-life key for the machines in theory, since Steam (ing pile) apparently finally runs on a LAN (i've long given up on steam as a useful application on my machine to care)...
If they were trying to run games without licenses, sure fine - but this is worse than Microsoft's strong-arm license tactics, which shouldn't be suprising since all of valve's owners are ex-microsofties (where you think all the money that started valve came from?)
Simply put - do not support Valve, do not support Steam
Gekido's Lair
Well, Microsoft lets the cybercafes use the games as long as the center buy legitimate copies.
The $9/month may not seem like much, but it adds up to about $540 per computer per copy of Counter Strike, had they been using it since the beginning.
Moreover, it is the principle of the thing. If every software company charged that much, there is no way even well-run businesses could survive. It may not seem a lot to you, but multiply that number by ten or twenty. Then figure out how much money you can make when you are charging no more than $4 an hour (on average, including membership discounts and what not) for gameplay.
Think about it. If the center has to pay $90 a month per system, the PC has to be used for about 22.5 hours before the center can start paying off its other expenses.
The average center has about a 25% usage rate. If they are open 12 hours a day, that is 3 hours of chargeable time per day, which means that the first week of every month goes to simply paying for the games.
That doesn't leave a lot of spare room in the budget for things like employees, rent, etc.
Valve is purported to be producing something that people will want. Just like SCO they are now just trying to milk there old products, that were made great by others, for everything they can.
Then the person running the business should have done his maths beforehand.
Noone has a given right to use someone elses property to make money from.
If this cost is too hight, then lok at providing different products of move to a different model
iv lost all hope in Valve.. and blizzard.. sure they Made great games... and im sure they will make more.. but i think these company's forgot thier roots.. at one point thier where dwelling at home programming like the rest of us.. i miss the old valve and blizzard you know.. from back in the day...
... "Don't bite the hand that feeds you"
i think valve should be more forgiving to the gaming comunity... if i remeber the OLD saying correctly
You have all these professional gaming leagues that run Counter Strike. If you want to have a clan match or a local league, a gaming center is a good place to go. Obviously, Valve wants to make it difficult for gaming centers to offer a place to practice and have regular leagues. Therefore, I think these major tournaments should stop supporting Valve.
It's fashionable to bitch about Valve and Steam, but Steam is a great system, and Valve has been great to its community. First off they hired Bram Cohen, the Bittorrent author, so they have serious technical chutzpah under the hood. Secondly, for a SEVEN YEAR OLD GAME I bought once for like $30-50, I have in my game list: Counter-Strike, Day of Default, Half Life, Team Fortress Classic, Death Match Classic, and Opposing Force, all games produced by Valve, for, you guessed it FREE. That is not to mention Ricochet (which is pretty useless) and tons of other mods I have (Natural Selection being probably the best). Now with these FREE games I get: A builtin server browser, a friends list, and guess what FREE UPDATES. Mod authors also get a channel to deploy their mods. For now it is, um, FREE, but they will in the future be able to license their games. Now for me, Joe Freeloader, that's not so great, but for mod authors that kicks ass. Where else has a company said: well, you're making a great mod for our game, you know what, we'll let you sell it, in OUR distribution channel on OUR bandwidth!
I think that is a hell of a lot for some piece of software I bought 7 FREAKING YEARS AGO. I think that is a pretty good deal. And if they perhaps want to get a cut from somebody else making profit off THEIR distribution and update system, that seems ok to me. I don't know the details of this particular incident, and perhaps Valve could have been more tactful, but Valve in general has been GREAT to the community. They even run forums wherein every luser on earth gets to post: "St34m 4re t3h suks. I h4te you. G1ve m3 m0re g4mes b1tch. kthxbai."
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
(not to mention how bad the online gameplay experience with cs can be nowadays.. *cough* wallhack *cough* aim-enhancer *cough* )
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First, this slashdot forum/article is/was a side headline on news.google.com (my first check of news for the day ususally--I like how they give you the ability to see how long ago the news was posted). It kind of threw a wrentch into the integrity of the site... using a slashdot forum as a primary source of valid information ^_^
As far as aimbotting and wallhacking go, I rarely have a problem w/ others using cheats... say once a week someone will be kicked from a server I'm playing. When I first stared cs only 6 months or so ago I used to bitch about hacking all the time then I realized that half the time people are "hacking" they are just really good. I know I've been banned from 10+ servers because they just assumed I was hacking cause I owned the admin and banned w/o question.
"The truth suffers from too much analysis"
I may be way of base here, but what if the game centers just charged people for admission into the place and the actual gaming was free? Would that remove them from paying any type of fee? Think of it as a strip club that has no cover charge but yet when you get in a glass of coke costs $10
"Of course they should be able to sue [the] ass off people who violate their licensing terms."
This discussion is not about whether Valve is acting within their legal rights; it's whether insisting on the legal rights that they do, and then enforcing them in the manner that they do, makes them assholes.
Legal != ethical != nice.
Retrospective means looking at the past (note that the word looks a lot like perspective). Retroactive means that something applies to actions in the past.
I question whether it's even legal to try to enforce that sort of licensing. It seems ridiculous. I don't need any special license to loan books from a library. There's no copying or distribution here. He's got legitimate (I assume, for the sake of argument) copies of half-life that're installed on machines. Every person playing has a legit copy that's not used by anyone else at the same time. Are they trying to claim it's public exhibition, because they aren't playing in private or something?
Of course not. We all know that once video game developers meet their financial projections, they don't deserve to make any more money than that. >_>
Would it be possible for people to bring in their own disks (USB disks, perhaps? How cheap can you make a 10GB USB disk?) with their own copy of HL installed and play off those? They're using their own copy, and not copying it, and not having it installed on multiple machines (read: hard drives), so the license is satisfied.
.iso image is a conventional hard disk and to do all its installs there. You then burn the iso image to disk along with any registry keys the install created and delete it. So far you've done nothing even remotely legally shady--you've installed something to an optical instead of a magnetic disk.
Heck, with a little special Daemontools-in-revers software it might be possible to convince the Steam installer that an
The cybercafe, meanwhile, has software on their machines that intercepts any write requests going to read-only drives (ex. the DVD that Bob just brought in) and caches them in memory (/swap). Read requests are checked against this table of writes to see if the files they want to access have been changed.
This is just an alternate version of the portable-hard-drive solution, except with cheaper media and a little finagling to run programs off them.
I don't know how the license is written, but it might also be possible for each customer to purchase a copy of halflife and bring it in, uninstalling it when they get done. In that case the cybercafe is not bound by any EULA, since they have not agreed to it; they are merely leasing the use of computers. The customers are the ones who have the half-life licenses,and they're within their rights, since they're not operating half-life for profit, not copying it, using it on one machine at a time, etc.
I'm not that familiar with the workings of Steam these days, but a hefty download might be required to get half-life up and running after a clean install. In that case, depending on the protocol the downloads use, it might be possible to use some sort of caching proxy to feed them to the new installs... this should be legal if it acts as a general proxy and isn't just a steam cache.
The cybercafe could also turn a blind eye to what users do--they could, for instance, not kick out (condone) people who bring in cd/dvd images of their Steam directories, along with their exported registry keys. (Someone could write a little program that allows for "temporary" registry keys, so people don't cause any permanent damage to the machines.) All the mess gets cleaned up at the end of the day in any event as the disks are reloaded from a pristine image.
This might not be strictly legal--the cybercafe might be liable under some sort of contributory-infringment clause since they're leasing hardware to people who then do something a tiny bit shady (copying of Steam directories). Still, it's got a much lower lawyer-radar signature than the current practice.
Noone has a given right to use someone elses property to make money from
That's a pretty short sighted view. They sold a copy of the product to me. It's mine, not theirs.
Imagine, if you will, that Black and Decker (the tools people) required any contractor who uses a B&D drill to pay them $5 a month if they use the drill to do work for a customer? There's no extra work for B&D, they have already sold the product, but suddenly they have a huge additional revenue stream which would very quickly outstrip the initial price of the product. Consider the consequences of buying an axe and having to sign a license that says you can use it for chopping wood, but if you sell the wood you must pay additional money to the manufacturer. It's none of their damn business how I use their product after they have sold it to me. It's mine, not theirs. What would be the economic consequences if everyone demanded additional money for a product if it was used in a particular manner?
This is a pretty unique aspect of computer program sales. It's also rather egregious because the marginal cost of making a computer game is often less than $5 - the CD, box, minimal instructions on paper, shrink-wrap, shipping, etc. And now they expect to tell some customers, people who have paid for the product but want t use it in a particular way, that they must pay more money.
Valve certainly have the right to ask for additional money every month, approximately twice their initial cost of selling the product, if you have the audacity to attempt to use their product in your business. But not everything that that you have the right to do is right to do.
Sure they could. They own the software. But you see, the point is that Valve licensed games to be played by individuals, not for people to make money off of. Windows is licensed to everyone - and for a server enviroment, you need to buy a license for every user connecting to that server.
I'm f#$king magic!
I would like to point out that ID has provided what can be termed the "ultimate" support. They released the source code to their old games. As a result, I can play old ID games on modern machines with modern machines and snazzy graphics, and the games are maintained by people who do it as a labor of love.
Valve is doing a major disservice to the gaming community.
With the death of arcades, gamers are at a loss for places to socialize with eachother. Cyber Cafes are the new kind of arcade. But if every game costs $3000 to license then that is going to put many cyber cafes out of business, and keep many from starting up in the first place.
No game company should have the right to prohibit someone from renting time on a PC and using the software contained on it. Imagine if car companies could do the same for cars... You'd be paying 10x as much whenever you needed to rent a car when traveling.
Why should a software company be allowed to do this?
We allow software licenses, because software is not a physical commodity. It is easily duplicated, and we need to protect it from being copied.
We also allow licenses because software can be buggy and software companies would be sued out of existence if they could not protect themselves from such lawsuits.
But nobody ever intended for software licenses to allow software developers to create new, machiavellian ways of controlling how you use the software. What if Microsoft could put in a license agreement that no copy of Microsoft Windows is allowed to be used to write a review of Microsoft software which is not positive? The way license agreements are going, this is the state we will be in at some point in the future.
Valve should have NO right to prohibit me from selling time on my PC. And no right to prohibit a cyber cafe from selling time on their PC's. So long as each PC has one copy of the software, and only one user can use it at a time, that should be the extent of Valve's rights via software license.
If Valve persists with these lawsuits, I will not be buying Half Life 2, and I will encourage my freinds online to boycott it as well. As a gamer, I do not want their crazy licensing costs to be passed on to me when I use a cyber cafe, and I do not want cyber cafes I use to shut down as a result of being unable to afford the license, and as a fellow game developer, I will not support a game company that pulls egotistical greedy crap like this. It is BAD ENOUGH that Valve's steam software now uses POP UP ADS to alert you when a new product comes out that they want to push. The banner ads were annoying as it was.
It's the same thing as with movies. Here in my department some fellow grad students have started up a film series and they have to get permissions to show these obscure art films. I know that one of the films they wanted to show they decided wasn't worth it becaue the rights owner wanted a rediculous sum of money to show the movie (to a croud of probably less than 20 people). They weren't even charging admission. So I would assume that since this is a for profit buisness, there would be similar legal restictions.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
And into this cost argument, where do you factor in the cost of development, the cost of the training and education of the developers, the cost of marketing and the cost of the risk involved in the whole venture?
:)
As someone who has invested over quarter of a century into my education I take such a trivialisation of its value very poorly, as should all professionals of any field.
Software is expensive to write, there is no way out of that. Period.
Besides, your example of using B&D tools is an interesting one. I've seen so many die that it would amount to a renewable license if I were dumb enough to keep buying them
Software differs from physical items like books and power tools because they are intangible and easy to duplicate. There is little to prevent multiple instances of a single copy being used at once. Because of these things it is easy enough to say you are comparing apples with lumps of rock.
Yes, everyone is playing legit copies. And if that was the end of it, then there would be no problem. The difference is that he is PROFITING from those copies.
I havn't read the Half Life EULA recently, but I wouldn't be suprised if the one with the retail box is for PERSONAL use. This is COMMERCIAL. In a legal sense, it's a world of difference. You can buy a DVD and watch it at home, but you can't show that same DVD in a theater and charge people per viewing. (not without paying extra to the studio) This is the same thing.
And your point is?
;)
Have you actually checked this in a dictionary, or is the lack of such a check the reason why you are posting as an AC ?
I can recommend the Oxford English Dictionary if you intend to use English. I'm afraid I don't know if it covers American though (in case you are from that side of the pond)
One of the themes of this article' postings has been that CS was originally created by the community and not Valve. Many have implied they are assholes for making money out of this. (despite the fact it requires their game engine that they DID write)
Turning the argument on its head, how can Valve be the only assholes when the cafe owner is taking something he didn't create and, without properly licensing it, made money out of it?
An addition, regarding the B&D or axe arguments.
You physically own that material that the tools is made from. You have the right to do with it as you please. However, you do not own the IP that went into its design and manufacture. Thus, you are not allowed to buy a B&D drill, take it apart and use its components to create fabrication tools to make copies of it.
Software is, by its nature, this kind of intangible IP. There is NO physical representation of it. The physical disk/CD whatever is all the physical material you have bought. In most cases you can use that as you please (frisbee, pizza cutter, windchime, ear-ring) so long as you don't breach the terms of the license under which you are permitted access to the software it carries.
Not saying it's right, but its not that unusual.
Except the problem here, for Valve, is that most game software does not have such clauses. Valve is somewhat unique in this. The guy made a "good faith" effort to secure licenses for all of his copies of Halflife, buying them at the store, just like he probably does with all of the other games in his cafe.
Did you know you can rent video games and movies, but NOT computer games, or music CD's?
What makes them different? Computer games have copy protection, just like DVD's. Both can be cracked, DVD's more easily. Both can be copied.
Why should computer games be different than video games?
You don't need a special license to profit from someone elses work. This is a really common misconception people have, and it's wrong. Copyright does not cover "every way someone can make money", it grants certain specific rights. You can profit off of someone elses work all you want as long as you don't violate any of those rights. For example, you don't need a special license to sell used books. In fact, you don't need a special license to sell books at all. All you have to do is buy books.
If the same 20 people each bought the game and played it at home on their own PC there would not be a problem. In this case they are in a public place playing a copy of the game they do not own on equipment they do not own. This makes it a public performance and different than playing it in your own house.
In the UK you can borrow music CDs from public libraries (at least in Worcestershire), although Blockbuster doesn't do them. I guess most people like to buy music CDs though, and there isn't a market, or they just can't get the rights.
As for computer games, computer games are a far smaller market (AFAIK), in my town the Blockbusters (a smallish 'Express' one) doesn't even have Gamecube games, becuase not enough people borrow them.
The other reason is the fact that console games run on a fixed platform. If it didn't work, it's either the disc, or the console. With PCs, what would you do if the renter said the game hadn't worked on their system? It could be that the persons PC doesn't have the specs, has incompatible drives etc. Or they could be saying that, to try and get there money back. And people would probably be far more likely to copy (or try to) a PC game rather than a DVD or console game, IMO.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
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Although, the cybercafe program that Valve has allows all of the Valve's games to be playable for $9/month (per computer)... unless it's been recently changed (I don't have the time [or need] to go check the Steam website). Alot of these cybercafes make more than that per computer, especially coming into the summer season.
Yes. For Valve. Now, if every other computer game manufacturer started charging the same, then any cybercafe that had games from twenty different publishers on their computers would have to pay licensing fees of $180/seat each month, or $2160/year. Per computer.
To put it another way: if a computer is charged $9/month, that's roughly 30c/day, or $6/day for 20 games, which is 25c/hour. If the machines only average 25% usage, this jumps to $1 per paid hour (and the license fees still keep aggregating, even during off-peak hours, or hours when the cafe is closed). If the owner charges $2/hour, this means the licensing fees would take up half his gross income, even before you count any expenses. If his other costs were just $1/hour, he had a 100% profit margin, but he's now making 0%. If his other costs are more, he's now operating at a loss. And how many businesses do you know with 100+% profit margins?
So, even if Valve has the legal high ground here, if this kind of usurious licensing policy catches on, it could spell the end of cybercafe gaming.
> Software is, by its nature, this kind of
> intangible IP. There is NO physical
> representation of it.
That's all well and good, but it doesn't explain why I should have to pay for it goofy.
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
You don't have to pay for it.
:)
You don't have to use it.
If you choose to use, then you pay. That is it. Your choice. It is their work and risk that has gone into it, it is up to them to decide what conditions under which they will allow you to use it.
PS could you clarify the 'goofy' bit? I'd like to know if its a term that will enrich my use of the language, or an insult I can get righteously annoyed at
Yes, we all know that even if all the conditions change, everything will remain the same. Damnit, learn to argue a point without making stupid generalizations at the end.
I was agreeing with you until you predicted the end of cybercafes.
Anybody following their products, as I assume a LAN center operator surely must, would certainly know about VALVe's CyberCafe licencing program; it's been mentioned many times on sites like PlanetHalfLife, and over and over again on the official Steam website (Steam being the online component to modern Half-Life), steampowered.com.
Even I have heard much about the licence, and I'm just a gamer. There's even a whole section on steampowered.com about it.
No, it will spend the endd of cybercafe gaming using Valve products. It's incredibly short-sighted, and I doubt that Valve's competitors would go along with it.
Same thing as above, to serve more customers, you have to buy more books. By purchasing retail copies and charging for their use, he can continue to service more and more customers without "restocking". You can't keep reselling the same stack of books ad infinitum.
Basically, the longer he goes on those retail copies he bought the more lucrative it is. Constantly increasing income on a static, one-time expenditure. (Other costs of upkeep non-withstanding)
No, it will spend the endd of cybercafe gaming using Valve products. It's incredibly short-sighted, and I doubt that Valve's competitors would go along with it.
As it is now, that is probably the case. However, what I actually wrote, as the last line of my post was:
So, even if Valve has the legal high ground here, if this kind of usurious licensing policy catches on, it could spell the end of cybercafe gaming.
Basically, if everyone follow Valve's trend and starts to charge licencing fees like this, there will be no games in cybercafes at all.
Here's why. Ease of use. You rent a game, put it in, and it plays.
Say someone rents Far Cry, and it doesn't run on install. He's going to want his money back, or help getting it running. What about patches? Should you provide them? PC games are way too much headache for a rental scheme.
I'm not going by any actual knowledge here, just thinking logically. Renting PC games would be a nightmare compared to console games.
(on topic, I'm expect there's licensing for game and movie rentals anyway. I'm sure the MPAA gets more than $20 per DVD that's on the rental shelf)
Micro$oft (as you like to name them) is actually one of the coolest in the gaming industry when it comes to running their games. They only require one copy of the game per player playing at any one time. PERIOD! So if I have 20 machines but only have 8 people playing at one time I only need 8 licenses. No extra monthly fee or anything. Before you start running your mouth you should have some idea what you are talking about and not just be an anti-Microsoft shill.
Exactly, which is why I had a dependent clause that said "I doubt that Valve's competitors would go along with it."
Of course. But the same goes for any physical object that I might buy. My point was that the thing they're selling being IP doesn't give Valve any more reason to use a goofy pricing model than if they were selling chairs to the place.
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
I got a pirated copy of Half-Life for the Dreamcast! SO SUE ME, BITCH!
Fucktard.
Circumcision is child abuse.
sweetheart, I wasn't "running my mouth" about the MS licensing structure. I was suggesting you try running without a valid license and see what happens. Buying retail copies of CS and running them commercial is pretty much like installing say, office or XP with out paying for it. It is in violation of the license, right? Last I heard MS was not real big on that (nor should they be...)
The licensing Valve has put in place is at their discretion. If you don't like it, (and I don't either) - then don't buy the product. IF you DO run it, then PAY for it...
As far as anti MS, sweetheart, I have got $1000s of MS software. Just bought a MS compiler last week. (Funny that I'm writing this from Slack box eh?) I expect I'll need another XP license soon, which I'll get. See, I don't LIKE paying for the stuff, but its part of the deal. If you don't want to honour the vendor's terms, (i.e. PAYING for it) then DON'T use the software...
I'm amused by the comments here, mostly about Valve protecting "their games", or about how Valve has a right to protect "their" intellectual property.
Let's get this straight: Valve has made one game. One. Not two, not three; one. How many people out there are still playing the single player game? Because that's all Valve has ever done. Even Steam, which is the second (or first) coming of the Messiah based on what you'd read here, was mostly developed by hired people from outside of Valve. Counter-Strike was not even an intentional gamble on behalf of Valve. It was a completely random lightning strike, lady luck smiling on Gabe Newell and friends. Counter-Strike, and the community that surrounded it, are the only reasons Valve has the power to hire lawyers expensive enough to bully around these gaming centers. Valve exists, now, because of chance and luck, solely because of the efforts of other people. If it weren't for Counter-Strike, a game designed altogether by other people (and for free), Valve would've forced the same pressured deadlines as any other developer so that they could feed their families. They haven't had to deal with that because of the efforts of gamers, and they have the nads to do stuff like this? We don't even know if Valve's sophmore effort will be any good.
They've outright lied to the gaming community (September 30), they pull stunts like this, and like an abused wife we keep coming back. Why do we keep kissing their ass?
Fuck Microsoft!
*waits for lawsuit*"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I thought the reason was obvious. They want to make more money :)
...
Seriously, though, I can see what you are saying, but I can also see the other side as well. In a way this is the same argument that has raged through the software industry since the year dot. Some publishers allow installation on multiple machines so long as only one is used at any given moment, some only allow installation on a single machine for use by a single entity, some
There are many different models that an IP owner can adopt and, usually have a right to adopt.
Of course there are occasions where they can lose the moral right to choose their own terms. Companies that have abused a position to gain a monopoly can be figured among those, but I cannot see that this has happened in this case.
you buy something people want to use and they borrow it for a sum smaller than what it would cost for the whole thing. People do it with power tools, DVDs, tables and chairs, and those little kid bouncing gyms. making money off of buying a product is what business is all about!
The real question is wether this it really enforceable or not? After all they are not infringing on copyright, they are just getting extra milage from a product they already legally bought. This is becomming a huge problem lately. in the movie space the courts ruled that it was OK to rent videos out....and this guy isn't even distributing so there's no chance of copying illegally...he's just allowing other people to play his copiee on his computers...how is that different than any other business use?
Frankly valve needs to be boycotted now or be hacked again! This is a very dangerous prececent to set...even MS isn't this LOW!!! What would the backlash be if MS told businesses they MUST pay every year for their pre-installed copies from Dell? this is exactly the same thing. If valve wants to make more money, RELEASE A F#$ING NEW product!!! Stop crying because people "don't use it how you say". That's childish.
nuf said!
They must be doing something wrong because they don't charge for usage per house you build....
I call Bullshit!!!
I have the right to rent it to who I please. How is copywrited work different (so long as I'm not making additional copies)? You're right under copyright is an unlimited and sole right to make copies. It's not a patent for Christ's sake. The author shouldn't get to dictate terms of use, only the conditions under which copies are made and obtained. Anything more is giving undue power to copywrite holders.
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digital-law-online google cache
Scroll down to where "renting movies" is highlighted on this page on copyright law, and you will see this paragraph:
"There are two significant exceptions to the first-sale doctrine given in Section 109. You may not rent either a sound recording or a computer program unless that computer program is part of a machine that is being rented or the computer program is to be used with a video game console. There is no similar prohibition against renting movies on videotape or videodisc."
This is the important bit:
"You may not rent [...] a computer program unless that computer program is part of a machine that is being rented or the computer program"
Cyber Cafes rent the MACHINE, not the GAME. Therefore what they are doing with Half Life and other PC games is LEGAL under copyright law as FAIR USE.
It would ONLY be illegal if they rented the game CD itself out.
Anyone care to argue againt my interpretation of this, or have any other pages on copyright law which contradict this? Because as far as I can see, Valve doesn't have a legal leg to stand on.
You cannot rent movies and videogames without specific permission of the copyright holder.
It's all there in Title 17 of the US Code. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/
Personally, I do not see the language of Title 17 as particularly clear in this matter. I see an argument that a cybercafe is renting time on a computer to access the software, not renting the software itself. Therefore, no special license is necessary for the software being used. You could bolster that argument if you charged the same fee regardless of the software being used.
I do not think it is so clear cut and depends entirely on how the situation is framed. Would you need a special Microsoft Windows license because it is a publically accessible computer? How about MS Office if the person is using Word or Excel?
Are you guys even aware of what the terms are? It's not that LAN Centers are trying to screw valve. A copy of the game is legally purchased for each machine. Fair enough right? No, Valve insists on an additional $10 per machine per MONTH. I operate 2 centers with 20 computers each. I purchased legally 40+ copies of Halflife BEFORE Steam was released. We were legal until they made this change to the steam engine. They change to STEAM and then decide we are illegal if we don't pony up the cash every month. That is not a fair business practice. If you buy a car and pay it off, you don't expect your manufacturer to come back 2 years later and start billing you monthly to use it. Thats crazy. If it was that way from the begining or even with Halflife2 that is fine and their right. To change the rules years after things have been in place is crap. Thats just my side and opinion on it. Please reread those term above. On my 40 machines, I have to pay $400 a MONTH to valve for a game I already purchased. So after a year I have paid an additional $4,800 to Valve. That doesn't count the 40+ licenses I bought originally on top of that fee. Consider Steam gone from my centers.
What I would like to know in regards to this is: where is the license shown on the distributed media?
That is, is there something on the outside of the packaging which states that media are licensed for non-commercial use? Is it in the instruction manual. During the game install?
If it's on the inside of the box - as with many pieces of software - this is just playing dirty. Especially since, in many cases, stores have a no-return policy on software media (due to piracy issues) unless it's provably defective.
Lastly, are there ways to circumvent this? Perhaps it could be worded that customers are renting the game temporarily during their stay at the cafe (are licenses different for rental places such as, say, Blockbuster), or they are purchasing a share of ownership for that time block.
Whilst Valve may be able to dictate their own licensing terms, I still find the direction this takes as frightening. Cafes not only bring the revenue for games purchased, but quite often they are where kids are introduced to new games they would like to buy (hey Valve, listen, we're talking FREE advertising).
At $9/mo/machine, that's about $54/year. For 10 machines that's $540. Not huge... but consider if every game was charged this way. To make a cafe work, you'll probably need 10-20 games. That's anywhere from $5000-$10000 or so per year. A considerable amount of change in "licensing" for a product that you've paid for, and which the home user doesn't pay for.
I think the paid-license model is flawed. If you want gaming centres to pay monthly for using the service, provide a service (such as the online servers) and a means to charge them for that. With CD-KEYs and IP addresses, this really isn't all that hard to do.
It doesn't matter if you already bought 40+ copies before Steam came out. In the EULA on those copies is a statment that says you are not allowed to use the software for commercial purposes. It's your fault for not reading it.
gl4ss' post isn't accurate. The engine/backend for the game totally changed with Steam (which you have to use to play CS 1.6 or DOD 1.1, etc.). Basically it is an on-demand content delivery system. Everytime you launch the game it validates/updates the software/anticheat detections. Steam has had some serious problem. I'm not sure the change to it was beneficial for players. Personal feelings on that issue are irrelevent to the question at hand (LAN licensing).
http://www.steampowered.com
The LAN center in question is probably using Steam, which provides access to Half-Life and its modes. Since Steam is new, it seems reasonable that Valve would not be bound to HL's original EULA.
I know someone asked for the EULAs. I tracked them down. I know the Steam one is correct. I don't have my original copy of HL with me (not at home ATM), but I did download the last actual update to HL (v1110). It's EULA was interesting. I expected it to say nothing about LAN centers or to explicitly allow HL to be used (as gl4ss' post seems to imply). In fact, however, the EULA for the last update to Steamless Half-Life specifically states that it cannot be used for commercial purposes; the example it gives is that of a LAN center.
I stuck the EULAs in text format on some webspace. Feel free to see for yourself.
http://www.usd.edu/~mrognsta/hl1110_eula.txt (the last update to stand-alone Half-Life)
http://www.usd.edu/~mrognsta/steam_eula.txt (Steam)
(I tried to create an account so I wouldn't be anon, but alas I haven't gotten the e-mail after an hour, so I'll post anyway.)