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Valve Angry Over Counter-Strike Subway Ads
Gamepocalypse writes "I noticed over on GamePro that Valve is considering legal action over the Subway ads that Engage In-Game Advertising was pumping into Counter-Strike matches. Valve's Doug Lombardi: 'Advertising or any other commercial use of our games requires our written permission.'" I'm unclear on this: Were the ads actually in the game already, or was the company just saying they were going to put the ads in? If the ads were displayed in-game, how was that done without Valve's knowledge? If the ads weren't in the game ... why would you make a public claim like this without clearing it with Valve first? Odd all around.
This is ridiculous. There are hundreds of commercial server rental places that have in-game ads splattered all over CS servers and have for years.
Just because it's a non-CS commercial company that's doing this is irrelevant.
When we hosted CS servers a few years ago (pre 1.5 / steam), we were trying to figure out how to do the same thing. Considering how much money running game servers costs, bandwidth-wise, I don't see how Valve really has any say in the matter.
They should be happy to have server-operators willing to host their games, and if the gamers themselves don't care about the in-game ads to help buffer server costs, then so be it.
It's not like there isn't thousands of servers out there for CS anyways - if players don't like it, then market forces will react appropriately - ie players will go to a different server.
Gekido's Lair
Are they hosting CS servers and running ads that way, or do they just have a custom spray paint logo that they go into games and spray with?
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I havent read the article... but I think people will be allowed to put any graphic into the maps on their servers for matches they want. If Valve allows me to mod the game, and I put a custom JPEG image in there, thats legal. What if I put my own picture into the spray marker? Am I trying to run for the mayor's seat? What if I put the peace sign? Will BMW be sued?
Either they do not allow mods at all (another fishy point if you 'own' the game) or they let people do what they want with their purchased goods. The only issue would be if people modified the game and then resold it.
Without reading the article, I think Valve will lose this.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
but say it requires the CS engine that the buyers of your game would have to buy from Valve?
Now how are all the Jerrods living in their mothers' basements playing counter-strike going to get fit? It's not like they go outside much as it is.
It seems as if they were using advertising via sprites or via player sprays, which does seem to not be as legitimate as the company trying to do the advertising claim. If it is what I predicted, valve may have a hard time trying to get them in court but eventually they should go down. Don't play in other people's backyards, you will only get kicked out, especially thanks to Steam nowdays.
Business Voyeur
Valve is not the one who has the right to complain in this matter; the authors of the modified maps are. (However, if the modified maps were originally made by employees of Valve, then it is most definitely their right to complain.) Most custom maps for virtually all moddable games these days ship with a readme, and this readme has a short legal disclaimer that outlines most or all of the following the following rights:
1. Others may not use the map as a base to build new maps. (But in practice, the author is commonly known to grant such permission if contacted directly.)
2. Commercial exploitation of the map and its supporting files by any method is strictly forbidden. (Such permission is almost never granted under any circumstances.)
3. Otherwise, anyone may freely distribute the map files as long as the readme is distributed along with it.
4. The license ends with a list of copyrights and trademarks that the map author used but that don't belong to him, such as the name of the game that the map was created for.
In general, such mini-licenses are just as binding as the GPL, and should be taken no less seriously. If I wrote a free game engine that people wanted to use for such a method, I would not object. However, I would require them to build their own maps; any maps I built for the engine would be off-limits for commercial purposes. On the other hand, any non-profit modifications they wanted to make to my maps would be perfectly fine, as long as the people playing those maps knew that my map was a base for someone else's work.
I'm pretty sure the company who was showing the ads just put up a bunch of fast servers and either inserted some textures in official CS maps or just made completely new original maps with the advertising in them.
"Valve's Doug Lombardi: 'Advertising or any other commercial use of our games requires our written permission.'"
Translation: we want our cut!
I might feel sympathy if their stance was "There will be no advertising in our games," but as it stands now I couldn't care less. Let the lawyers deal with it.
Here are some examples of advertising in-game. This is inside Valve-made maps, not custom maps.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
Really, that's all that's going on here - Engage has made a mod that fills the game with advertising, and is being paid for it (though by advertisers as opposed to by gamers) without Valve's permission. Oddly enough, they could have filled CS with unpaid ads, and gotten away with it (though that would be a piss poor business model...)
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One of the fundamental reasons why I hate in-game advertising, beyond the fact that I already paid for the game, is that these ads are complete and utter garbage. First of all, no effort whatsoever is put into making them attractive or interesting, and secondly they just drop them in random places on the map.
It's pathetic.
It's like the crap that passes for advertising on the internet. At some point I had hoped that internet ad design would improve. It really hasn't, primarily because the barrier for entry into web design is so low. Any inept designer can slap together a web graphic and apparently thats sufficient for the web. These guys obviously don't put any effort at all. But I'm forced to stare at this garbage, advertising products I have no interest in whatsoever.
The best part is stalking around in a terrorist hideout and finding that the interior designer of the group decided to adorn the walls with soft drink and fast food ads.
Nothing like stalking through the ancient Aztec's holy temples and waterworks trying to headshot some n00bs to find out they loved to "Eat Fresh."
in case anyone was wondering, i was one of the first people to figure out how to do it and i wrote up a detailed howto on how to add these to maps (as well as add spawn points, convert map types, and other things)...
here's the instructions
http://www.joe.to/cstrike/ents/
What Engage In-Game is doing is no more illegal than someone hosting a custom mod on their server. This particular mod just happens to show pictures of brand-name sandwiches with a price tag. Bandwidth and server resources aren't free, and if this is how Engage In-Game is going to support keeping their servers online for free public use, they can stick advertisements on the virtual game walls. Would you rather they use bots that spam in-game chat every 5 minutes with text ads? The ads are far from intrusive, and if you don't like them, don't play on their servers.
Now, if Engage In-Game was paying players to go to other people's servers to spray and spam advertisements everywhere, that's going over the line because then they'd be intruding on OTHER people's servers.
I Dont blame Valve suing them. In the Steam EULA, it states in E-iii: "You are entitled to use the Steam Software for your own use, but you are not entitled to: . . . (iii) exploit the Steam Software or any of its parts for any commercial purpose." The advertsement is breaking the Steam EULA by the company is making money off products that Valve makes with out consent from them.
how "funny" that Valve never went after people who sprayed porn even though they say themselves that the group of people who play the game is between 13 and 22? (what not). I RTA and I know those images are perm, and if they were not - would they still care? DRM issues? Or CS is open source?(after all CS in a mod of HL)If it is an open source, why they complain about it?
Rael
That works fine in the physical world. If somebody designs an unoffical add-on to my car, it's OK. Unofficial mod-kits are legal too, so long as they meet safety specifications.
The company is not selling Valve's material (the game). They are not giving Valve's material away for free. Valve still gets money for their product. The modification company gets money for theirs, probably in the form of advertisement bucks.
What valve is pissed at is that they didn't think of it, or didn't implement it, first.
From what I can tell, they aren't re-releasing the game, they make a modification which can be installed on already legitimized versions of the game.
Remaking scenes and reselling an original work would be piracy. Again, this still requires the original work and thus is not.