Slashdot Mirror
Valve and Vivendi Part Ways
IGN has news that the long running suit between Valve and Vivendi has finally been resolved. There has been some sort of settlement reached, the immediate result being that as of August 31st Vivendi will no longer be distributing Valve titles. From the article: "Valve has not announced a new publishing partner, or whether the company will now solely rely on Steam for distribution. A new publishing agreement would almost certainly be needed for the Xbox version of Half-Life 2 scheduled for release later this summer."
I think this is great news (even though we've been expecting it for awhile). The nice thing is that now Valve can actually focus on their issues with Steam with all their resources as opposed to trying to deal with Vivendi. Hopefully this will also start a new erra of games being released without the silly rules of publishers getting in the way. HL2 probably would have been cheaper via steam than in the store if it hadn't been for Vivendi.
I for one would be more than happy to download (and burn myself) all the software I purchase if it meant saving some dollars. Not only that, but the actualy software company would probably see a lot more of the money for their software in this type of a model.
Congratulations Valve!
Because it is for X-Box, not PC. In order to release a title for a console system, complicated contracts and agreements must be made between the console maker and the publisher. You can't just press DVDs for X-Box and sell them. Not only would they not work, they would be illegal to sell. Valve would likely have a difficult time getting microsoft to allow them to self publish the game for X-Box.
This doesn't even consider the shelf space purchasing and advertising that is likely needed for a big budget release as this.
These are the sort of considerations that are killing the garage game industry; except for PC games, it is now almost impossible to distribute games without a publisher.
Please don't let it be EA
Please don't let it be EA
Please don't let it be EA
Knight37 - Once a Gamer, Always a Gamer
Damn you, Angelina Jolie! Is nothing sacred?
Lucas carved out a new freedom in film-making, Google defined their own industry and vowed to do no evil, now Valve has its own opportunity to define a new way of distributing computer games.
Onya Valve!