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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.
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
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.
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.
I guess I just haven't seen the side you have seen. I have never had any problems with CD keys. I put it in once when I installed years ago, and then put it in once again when I had to rebuild my machine when my hard drive crashed. Even through upgrading to Steam I don't recall having any cd key related issues. It has not inconvenienced me in the slightest. I AM however very annoyed at games that INSIST your CD be inserted in the CD drive. I'm not going to walk all the damn way over and get my CD and pop it in and wait for the CDROM to spin up just to launch a freaking game. Of course Half Life has never done this. Other than a simple one-time CD key prompt at install I'm not aware of ANY "copy protections" for Half Life.
Since Counter Strike and DoD and other mods are popular, I don't find it unreasonable for Valve to be charging the supposed $35 (I haven't really checked so I can't confirm that price). Hell, people even PAY for Counter-Strike and DoD boxed editions which you can get free if you have Half Life anyway, so you can't blame Valve for that. It's not like they broke down the doors of Counter Strike and DoD developers and forced them to be hired at gunpoint. Valve gave these people jobs.
As for Linux support, other than Carmacks token moral gestures, Linux fundamentally is still a total waste of developer money. Some may do it, but only because one of 1) it may be easy 2) they believe in it despite it being a loss, and it gives them leverage against Microsoft 3) they want some hardcore gamer "cred" or "buzz". While it is certainly nice that some companies do this with some games, it is completely NOT obligatory, or expected. I'll note that Half Life and even Steam (according to reports) run on Wine in Linux.
Let's not forget, that while we can whine about all this Valve has also been working on their next game, Half Life 2, for something like FIVE YEARS. It would be dumb, and as a prospective HL2 player, I certainly wouldn't like it, if Valve dumped all their time into stellar support for an aging seven year old game. Let's note that in their lifetime they have essentially only put out ONE game. They are just wrapping up their second one, it's not even out yet. So I think it is a bit much to protest some sort of history of bad behavior. (HL2 is even supposedly going to support HL1 content, so your HL1 investment is leveraged even *further*).
Now Valve certainly could be "demonstrating greed and aggressive attempts at monopolization" at cyber cafes. I just don't know. From my experience on the consumer end it seems out of character, although I suppose it is possible they have a "love the community, screw the cyber cafes" philosophy, I just don't know.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
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?
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.
If gaming centers aren't seeing that kind of money in an entire year then they are doomed anyway. $60k is inadequate to pay for staff alone. Throw in money for space, maintenance, new hardware and costs far exceed the numbers you give.
Clearly you don't have much business sense. To run a business you figure out your costs and charge accordingly. If gaming centers can't afford Valve's titles they shouldn't offer Valve's titles. If I want to run a luxury car rental service I can't set the price of a rental at $5/day and then complain the high prices of luxury cars will drive me out of business.