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."

Comments

Bullying? I Think Not.

[illuminata]

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.

Re:Bullying? I Think Not.

[dubious9]

From the article:

Should you demonstrate to our satisfaction the number of seats you have been using and presently need licensed and if you enter into a pre-paid, one year commercial license agreement with Valve for that usage, Valve will consider this matter resolved and will not pursue any claims it may have for past infringement of its software products in regard to their use at your establishment.

The point that they do not simply have the option to stop offering Counter Strike. They have to buy a license if they don't want to get sued. Maybe the guy made a mistake and thought they just by buying 40 copies of half-life and putting them on his computers was enough.

This was a reasonable position given that:

...with companies such as Microsoft offering licenses through cybercafé organizations like iGames such that as long as each copy of a title is legitimately purchased, cybercafés may use them.

Yes he profited from using Half-life and the free CS mod, and yes he should have made sure that all of the licensing was correct. But as a company with large community of followers, why would you want to seed mistrust as a money-grubbing corporation to some shmuck who didn't know he needed a different license?

If he wants to keep using CS, then he should get the license, but he should have the opportunity just to stop offering it (if he had accuired the copies legally), as it could have been just an honest mistake.

Of course there could be more details to this case that shine less favorable on the cafe, but forcing someone to buy a license or risk law-suits doesn't exactly ring as a nice thing to do.

Well, duh.

[schild]

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.

Re:Why is this a FPP? Shut up and pay up FFS...

[Calibax]

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.

Valve's "games"

[superultra]

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?