EA To Publish for Valve

Primotech writes "It appears that Valve has secured EA as its new publisher. When the developer settled its lawsuit with Vivendi back in April, the company was left without a publisher to distribute boxed copies of its games. The company has tapped EA, which will publish and release Half-Life 2: Game of the Year Edition and Half-Life 2 for the Xbox sometime this year. From the article: 'EA is the worldwide leader in bringing best of breed games, for all platforms, to market...By combining EA's unparalleled operation structure and distribution channel with Valve's award-winning development teams and games community, we've established an awesome combination for delivering great products to console and PC gamers around the world.'"

Comments

Contract?

[Nos.]

What I wouldn't give to see the contents of this contract. Since Valve really wanted to be able to distrubte electronically and bypass a publisher, I would imagine that's in their somewhere. Still, I think any publisher could make a lot of money still of HL2. Lets face it, there's still mods coming (DoD) and with an XBox version on its way, store shelves will be packed again with HL2 boxes.

I hope Valve was hard-nosed

[pkw111]

This is terrible, potenetially. I hope Valve was hard-nosed during negotiations, otherwise $EA$ will be pushing unfinished crap out for unrealistic deadlines. Anyone following what they did AGAIN with the battlefield series is shuddering at the thought of there slimy finger all over a nice game like HL2

Re:I hope Valve was hard-nosed

[Elshar]

I think you misunderstand the problem. Its more akin to a writer being forced by their editor/publisher to release a work that's still in between a rough draft and a final draft. That, and with the publishers seemingly able to stipulate odd requirements for patches make it really hard for the developers to even publicly fix issues sometimes. (I seem to remember this being the case with atari/moo3)

Re:I hope Valve was hard-nosed

[daVinci1980]

You apparently do not have any inkling how the game industry works. Allow me to enlighten you, young padawan. (Either you don't work in the game industry, or you're very new if you do. Or you don't keep up with the industry rags, at least).

In the game industry, there are two (basic) types of developers. First party developers (that would be, developers who are actually just a branch within the publisher) and third party developers (who are working with a publisher via a contract).

I've worked for both--including the evil empire. The bottom line is that in the end, the publisher is law. Regardless of whether you are a first or third party developer, the publisher's QA department has to sign off on a title before it is released. When a product is realeased before it is ready, it is the publisher's fault--and was most likely the publisher's decision. In the case of PCs, there is at least some forgiveness for releasing games that have various bugs; due to the nature of PC hardware (and the nearly infinite combinations of video cards, sound cards, motherboards, RAM, drivers for all of the aforementioned, etc, etc, etc), it is almost certain that there will be at least one person whose machine is incapable of playing your title. However, a console is a fixed target. There is no excuse for all but the rarest of hangs. The memory allocations should even always shake out the same way, for chrissake. The thread switches--should your title use threads at all--are deterministic for the same sets of user inputs.

And incidentally, in the case of the three titles mentioned above, both NFSU and BF2 where developed first party by EA. (DICe was purchased by EA after the success of BF1942). The publisher was the developer in this case.

As far as the topic at hand, I'm neither here nor there. On the one hand, it saddens me that yet another talented studio has signed with the evil empire. (I imagine in 5-10 years that the other publishers will be gone or will form together to sue EA for monopolistic practices). On the other hand, I haven't played HL2 because I disagree fundamentally with a copy protection scheme that phones home even when I play single player.

EA is just as bad as Vivendi

[grumpygrodyguy]

EA is the worldwide leader in bringing best of breed games, for all platforms, to market

Sorry, but that's total bs. As much as I loath Vivendi, EA is right up there with them. If you go to a store and pay $50 for Battlefield 2(an EA title) and install it, you will learn that you can't play online unless you completely uninstall all CD emulation/burning software on your computer.

Most slashdot gamers are PC professionals with dozens of utility programs like these installed on their computers. Utilities they need in order to use their PC the way they want. Insisting on the permanent uninstallation of these applications is an arrogant intrusion on the part of EA.

I'm infuriated because I bought this game fair and square and I can't play without a nocd crack. Some of you might suggest I just return the game, but it's a great game and I want to support the developers because they did such a great job...but I'm done throwing money into EAs coffers who screw their customers into altering their PC just to satisfy their draconion copy-protection scheme.

I will certainly be getting my next Valve title through steam however, and not through EA's handcuffs in a box. I just hope that in the future, Steam or another service like it will be able to distribute all PC titles through the internet, so we can finally get rid of these price inflating middle-men.

Re:EA is just as bad as Vivendi

[corrosive_nf]

Thats a complete lie. Ive got daemon tools/alcohol 120% and a few others installed and I did NOT have to untinstall them to get bf2 to install.

Re:EA is just as bad as Vivendi

[whodunnit]

That's utter bullshit. I have 4+ cd/dvd burning programs on my computer, daemon tools, and a few other programs that would probably fall into those catagories and BF2 gave me no problems installing what so ever.

Re:EA is just as bad as Vivendi

[Zeussy]

I'm running Alcohol 120% and get no problems.

Re:Um, what?

[LocoMan]

Maybe they didn't want to mess with the other things publishers do (advertising and the like)... or maybe just didn't have enough money to fund complete development of their next game (since games, like movies, don't start to bring in money until they're released).

Re:Steam

[dnixon112]

Maybe there's the flip side of the coin. Valve would also like to have more games on their Steam platform. EA's library would do nicely I'm sure. Perhaps this deal is only the beginning.

Steam, or EA? The decision is *cough* obvious

[i_ate_god]

Thats the message I'm getting here. People hate steam because it prevents them from what exactly?

Oh right, being able to properly pirate a game and show Valve they don't give a shit.

HL2 by anyone's standards is a high calibre game. Even if you don't like FPS, there is no question about it. The attention to detail and the sheer power of the Source engine are mind blowing. Of course, these things take time and money to develope. I for one am grateful that Steam exists. It's so much better than any other possible method of protecting Valve's IP. For starters, it didn't require any hardware changes. It doesn't require an internet connection. It doesn't require a dongle. It doesn't really require anything at all.

For those who obviously don't know, Steam can and will work in an Offline mode. It will allow you to play HL2 single player, single player mods, and allows you to work on your mods and maps with the Source SDK. Don't tell me it doesn't, because it does. I lost internet for two weeks and the only thing that prevented me from committing mass murder and subsequently suicide was still being able to work on my Source mod, and still being able to play HL2 to see how Valve did certain effects.

I can not figure out for the life of me why some people are just so paranoid about steam calling home. It is a reasonable measure taken to protect valve's prized work and to ensure that there is a steady cash flow to Valve so that they can outdo themselves, again. Luckily, I do not have to look forward to idiotic DRM concepts that are not consumer friendly. I don't need a dongle, I don't need special hardware, I don't even need a CD. I don't even need to visit a store. And most importantly, I do not need to give EA money.

There seems to be a great deal of ungratefulness for this ease of use with Steam. It's almost like the mere mention of a company that wants to protect its works is now branded evil, even when they do it the easiest way possible. And naturally, all hatred and complaints come with absolutely no suggestion for an alternative.

There is another huge advantage to Steam that many people have overlooked. It allows Valve to implement very strict anti cheating measures. If you cheat, your copy of HL2 becomes INVALID and there is nothing you can do about it. I applaud this measure. It's impossible to fake your cd key with steam, so the arguement that "well, someone else did it" fails because that is solely your responsibility. And even if you are busted for cheating, you can STILL login to Steam, and STILL play online, just on insecure servers that don't implement VAC, which is more generous than I would've been. CS 1.5 was plagued by hackers, and there was little Valve could do about it. Now they much more control over it.

So all in all, the complaints about steam are unfounded, illogical, and demonstrates a great deal of ignorance and unfounded paranoia by the people who are against it.