NEWS: "Hey Vivendi...seriously, fuck you."

CULTURE: "Hey Vivendi...seriously, fuck you."

If you are a PC gamer and have been under a stone recently, you will know that Half Life 2 is about to hit the stores, or to be more precise already has hit. The official street date is the 16th however Best Buy has stated that date is "no longer valid,” most probably because other stores have started selling copies and they don't want to be left behind and lose revenue. The significance of this is that Valve (the games company developing Half Life 2) said that if the street date were broken, then they would 'unlock' HL2. Each copy of HL2 needs to be unlocked by Steam, a content system developed by Valve to allow people to buy their games over the Internet. However, in another twist in the stormy relationship between Valve and the games publisher Vivendi Universal, Valve has been prevented from unlocking their own game.

This comes in light of a recent article on Gamespot that highlights the rocky nature of Valve and Vivendi's relationship during the rocky 5 years of development that HL2 went through.

George Broussard of the games company 3D Realms (responsible for the ever delayed Duke Nukem Forever) said pretty much what we were thinking in a post on gaming site shacknews:

I knew that Steam would cause a problem. Why the fuck do I need a server to authenticate a game I have in my hand?

damn! this sucks. I've had it on my comp for a week. all pre downloaded by steam and can't play it. what is with distributors

Well, Vivendi does suck.

supposedly it helps prevent against cheating and is more convenient.. everyone knew this was more of a control system for them than a boon for the gamers, though, I think

that sucks!

and i work at a best buy, i don't remmeber reciving any HL2 copies yet. but then agian i havent been to work today lol. vivendi sucks. if everyone realses a game early, we most likley release it also. cuz if everyone else is selling it, why not? right?

Becuase whoever sold it to you was contractually obligated to wait until the release date before they sold it. They broke their contract, sold it to you in voilation, and unfortunately, they have your money and you have a game you can't play. I see little point in Vivendi being as hard-nosed as they are about it, but if you want to be pissed at someone be pissed at the people who sold it to you.

It's not Valve's fault that shady retailers broke the street date. And they originally promised that if the street date was broken that they would activate it... Vivendi is the one keeping them from doing that. If you're pissed, be pissed at Vivendi for holding a lawsuit over their heads.

Think about it from the distributor's perspective- Valve has thousands of people who have the game ready to go right now, just waiting for their code. If some stores fuck up and release even a few hard copies before the street date, Valve was going to switch it on for everyone. And who is going to go to Target and beat up a clerk to get an early copy when they can just download it off Steam?

Valve designed a system to cut out the middlemen in a business where the publishers like to treat their developers like crap. Vivendi doesn't like it, so they're sticking it to you. Don't like it? Support Steam and help eliminate the distributors.

this is why i just ordered it on steam, so i don't hav eto fuck with that nonsense....vivendi can eat a dick

That is funny,
I don't know why, but it is.

why is vivendi the villain here?

because they're angry that Valve screwed them out of their distibution rights by developing the Steam Network and thus screwing them out of a large amount of their expected yearly revenue?

not to mention screwing their customers by denying them the ability to play games they own both the hard copy of and server for due to the necessity to connect to "authentification" servers?

VU is not the guilty party here, it never has been. The guilty party is Valve, who should never have signed in to a distribution agreement they had no intention of complying with.

The reason Vivendi is the villain is because video game publishers have become notorious for forcing developers to push out products before they're ready and screwing them on the returns. But more relevantly, there's a business reason.

While I can understand Vivendi's financial interest, it's very difficult for a gamer to turn on Valve given that Valve has always been receptive to and open with their fans. Valve revolutionized the online gaming community by encouraging mods made with open source tools. Then they hired the best mod makers onto their staff.

So whether Vivendi feels like they're being screwed or not, who's side do you think the gaming public would be on? Corporate uncaring giant, or small charismatic and responsive studio?

Sounds to me like Valve's got the better business plan.

Plus they're not in breach of their contract by releasing over Steam, so Vivendi's got nothing to legally bitch about.

Aaaahhhh, Broussard.

Good ole chubsy-ubsy.

[Edited on Nov 14, 2004 by Jeff_Fries]

We have it at the store I work at (a privately owned business, and we displayed a few of the boxes, but we haven't sold them. Turned out there wasn't any point anyway.

Gabe Newell of Valve tells it like it is:

Vivendi sucks ass anyway. With the exception of the rad Riddick game, JPG, and HL2, all of which are developed outside of VU, the entire company has delivered nothing but shit in the last...well...always.

Fuck'em.

Okay, so I go to best buy with every intention of picking up HL2, and damnit!!! theres no copies there, not even a place for them. I guess since this new devil/angel customer thing, no one even asked if i needed any help. BITCHES!!!!!

I guess I have to wait until Tuesday

To anyone wondering, this is a new newswire policy: all titles must have the word fuck in them

I have little respect for Valve, and not much more for Vivendi. Maybe if Apple had bought Vivendi out like they were considering Valve wouldn't be a bunch of losers about making ports of their games.

I'm not a gamer so it doesn't bother me any, but just like with its predecessor there likely won't be a Mac port simply because Valve are being a bunch of assholes. The game could easily be ported, but Valve is asking for like 10 times as much as is usually charged for buying a license to port the game.

[Edited on Nov 14, 2004 by AceTracer]

Not a whole lot of peace between OS's in the vid game world

What?!

Ah!

Right on Maat, silverstreak, and Serenity. You guys know your shit.

If I was I'd be a Mac gamer, and hence have none at all

Then they made us all cry with steam. I guess I have a beef with VALVe (i'm a nerd). VALVe and Sierra rank just under The Carlisle Group and Landlocked Areas on the list of things I hate.

I guess you can measure VALVe's talent though by the fact that no matter how much I swore I wouldn't buy HL2 or ever play a steam-based game again for all the aggravation its caused me (and total lack of help that they offered) i'll still buy HL2.

One thing though... VU has fucked itself permanently with this in regards to public approval:

If you have purchased a copy of Half-Life 2, we are sorry you are still waiting to play. This is not Valve's choice. Vivendi is insisting that the game has not yet been released, and has threatened that Valve would be in violation of its contract if we activate the Half-Life 2 Steam authentication servers at this time.

Thanks for your patience and we will update you when we have more news to share.

Its like a crack dealer saying "look guys... I really wanna push this stuff... but the big boss won't let me."

I say it's about time for someone like Mr. Newell to take his share of blockbuster revenues and found a distribution company that isn't staffed exclusively by bloodsucking marketing troglodytes that have never touched a Dual Shock. It'd be great if game production houses could sell their stuff through the more open-minded distribution channels, but as we all know, such things do not yet exist. Steam is a great idea, but without a traditional brick-and-mortar element, it’s just going to remain another good idea that is twisted to nefarious and counter-productive ends by contracts with soulless distribution giants.

Congratulations on completing your magnum opus, Gabe, but please, for the good of us all, skip buying yourself a boat and a summer mansion. Instead, do something to release your industry from suffocation at the hands of corporate oligarchs.