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No Half-Life 2 on Steam?
Karl the Pagan writes "Following on the heels of a previous Steam-related story, Vivendi Universal may block Half-Life 2 distribution via Steam. Additional motions can be filed until November 18th, but since Sierra/VU have final QA approval on the HL2 gold is it possible they could delay the game until after the court decides on these motions?"
This possibility could be to Valve's advantage. They haven't released anything worthwhile since Team Fortress Classic and no one I know likes Steam at all.
What will this mean for people who got the voucher with their ATI card? ATI promised to give them Half Life 2 (through Steam), but then HL2 was delayed so they didn't get it (they instead got the old half-life gams). Would it eventually be released through steam?
I think HL2 will be better than Doom 3 as well, if it is released in the next month or so. If we have to wait for the trial (March 2005) and everything to be sorted out and it doesn't get released until fall 2005, its not going to be better, because it will be a year later, when every other FPS has "caught up". Once again, politics and legal are going to cost both companies a lot of money, both in fees and lost revenue from upset fans, and the delay making the game less desirable.
you deal with someone with no morals like vivendi and seirra and what do you expect.. why would they even have an agreement with them anymore, try to get out of it and just release everything yourself, the publishing company could be completely irrelevant with steam...
make it so that people can burn half life 2 cd's legally, then give them to their friends BUT with the catch that in order to decrypt it they gotta go pay valve directly online for the small program to activate it (they could sell it alot cheaper than normal and still make more money than normal, too)
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
Vivendi Universal Games is suing Valve to prevent distribution over Steam. Considering how many people will be downloading or have already downloaded over Steam, it's no surprise. VUG is getting very very little out of this deal with Valve getting almost everything. VUG will do anything it can to prevent Steam distribution, since the dispute is over tens of millions of dollars in potential sales. Gamers are going to buy the game anyways, another 3-6 months or whatever it takes is not going to drastically hurt sales.
Bottom line: HL2 is going to be delayed until this is resolved.
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