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.

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

[grumpygrodyguy]

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.

The error message the game gives you doesn't tell you the name of the offending program. It says something like '...uninstall all CD emulation software...'. Some tools package both emulation and ripping into the same tool set. So the already pissed customer has to keep uninstalling software one program at a time until it magically starts working.

Something like that should be grounds for a class action suit. I know people love to say 'read the EULA', but how long until the average EULA takes 20 days just to read and understand? It's more akin to entrapment than an agreement.

Re:EA is just as bad as Vivendi

[Wilson_6500]

Gamers need to be on the watch out for EA and other publishers who could try to form some kind of GPAA--we're already hearing the same story of "I want to support the artists (read developers), but I know the money just goes to the labels/whatever (read publishers)." Now they're trying to control how their product is distributed at the device level (barring CD emulators).

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:Steam

[Guspaz]

I think that the fact that EA is the publisher is mostly irrelevant. Valve is (was) in a very unique position; they are an independant developer with a huge franchise looking for a publisher. Any publisher would kill to publish the game, under extremely tight restrictions. If a publisher doesn't like the restrictions, Valve can say, fine, publishers are knocking down the door to get this deal.

I suspect that the contract that Valve has with EA gives EA absolutely no control over the games themselves. EA normally only has control of games because they either made a game themselves, own the company that made the game, or put forth cash to make the game. Valve has plenty of cash, so they don't have any reason to give EA any control over their games at all.

I am guessing that the deal that Valve has with EA is pretty much "We supply the games, you publish them, end of story." I don't think we'll see EA delaying future releases via Steam because they're not on shelves yet; Valve didn't like it when Vivendi did that.

In short, I think that EA is simply a vehicle to get products on shelves and will have no control over anything. For those of us who hate EA and would rather our money didn't go to them, this is exactly what Valve's excellent STEAM platform is designed to do.

I purchased HL2 via STEAM. Vivendi didn't get a penny, though Vivendi did set a minimum price that Valve could charge. And now that EA is Valve's new publisher, EA won't get any of my cash; it's going all to Valve.

Distributing -- NOT Publishing

[Toddarooski]

According to GameSpot, Valve is self-publishing the title. EA is only distributing the game (i.e. using their contacts to get their games into stores like Toys R Us and Target). That's it. Nothing to freak out about.

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.

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.