Honestly, a bit surprised by this. It wasn’t even on Steam. Hopefully switching to an open source SDK will get this back up.
I think people are missing the fact that most fanmade content that Valve has historically been ok with is all original material. Black Mesa, Portal Stories, and others all used the Valve IP but were all original content. This port actually uses Valve-created content so, regardless of Nintendo’s involvement (although it makes the demand for this action stronger), they legally have to enforce it or risk losing the legal protections for that property.
Nintendo just gave them a convenient way to stop it before they needed to do it anyways.
I don’t think thats how it works for copyright. You have to defend your trademarks to keep them but for copyright, you can decide who can use it rather arbitralily.
Especially allowing a release of an old game on platform you don’t support which would not really compete with you.
It’s not about whether it competes. It’s about whether a “reasonable person” could confuse it for being an authorized product of the IP owner. In this case, people could confuse it with both a licensed Nintendo product (since it runs on original hardware) and it could be confused with an official Valve release (since the content is an exact (as possible) recreation of the levels and assets from the original game.
So you are clearly talking about trademark. A game design can’t be trademarked. Only the name. Yes, if the name could be confused, that could be an issue. Maybe the cover art to some extent, if it is trademarked.
But if the game origin can be confused, so what? No law against that.
So because it depends on Nintendo libraries, valve wanted it taken down, but valve doesn’t represent nintendo and the project isn’t by them or on steam, so who’s actually at risk of being sued and why?
If Nintendo asked the developer to stop using Nintendo stuff I’d get it, but in that case it was never legal to begin with and the developer knew they had no license to use those libraries, so why all of a sudden does the developer not want to continue at the request of valve, are they an employee of valve or something? This is super weird, its not even a nintendo IP
Pure speculation:
Nitendo is one of the most notorious copyright litigators in the industry, it would not surprise me if they objected to the use of their libraries and pressured valve to exercise their ownership of the IP to shut it down
I know nothing about this, so honestly don’t listen to me. But Nitendo is a huge joykill so I’m happy just assuming it’s at least partly their fault
So because it depends on Nintendo libraries, valve wanted it taken down, but valve doesn’t represent nintendo and the project isn’t by them or on steam, so who’s actually at risk of being sued and why?
Valve is happy to allow fan creations when they are on Steam. Valve doesn’t want such things outside of Steam and used a sock puppet to save face.
Maybe if he gets permission from Nintendo he could keep going
It sucks but I also wouldn’t want to get involved with Nintendos lawyers so I can’t blame Steam.
My bet is that Valve doesn’t like it when you reproduce their games using the same name, since both this and TF2 source 2 got hit, but we also got an original portal mod on steam last week, and Black Mesa is a monetized remake of HL1 that exists on steam.
Hell there are dozens of mods and expansions available directly on steam with their own store page instead of workshop.
Black Mesa also had to change its name one time iirc. It was originally being developed as Black Mesa: Source, and Valve told them to drop the “Source” part.
Watching Black Mesa development was really neat, because it kept getting delayed, then they stopped updating fans while insisting it was still in development, and we’d all pretty much decided it was never getting finished.
Then it came finally came out and was so good Valve let them license and sell it.
If the name is the problem and Valve wants to be cool they could just say that.
Legal teams. Not there to be cool, there to shut things down. Chances are that team bypassed the folks that make the cool decisions. So there is a chance this could be changed when the right person catches wind.
This wouldn’t be the first time. I have dim memories of this sort of thing happening before. Just not quite sure on the details.
That’s not the only problem, I think. It’s not an adaptation of their work, it’s a “demake” which means it uses original source files or, at best, exact recreations of that work. The other projects people are comparing this to adapted Valve’s work to make something original. This isn’t original and uses the existing name. It would be very easy for Valve to make the claim that this product could be confused as an official Valve product even if most people who are interested would know the difference or be able to tell.
Just read the article. It’s about Nintendo.
Valve has stated that they are okay with people making mods using their property, as long as they either openly state that they are not Valve, and do not use Valves IP in their names unless they ask for permission by Valve, which they will give in many cases. They are more strict when it comes to commercial games using their IP, of course. I think in the case of Portal 64 though, it definitely has to do with Nintendo’s ridiculously over the top protection of their copyrights.
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This blows. Lawyers ruin everything
How do grown ass adults look at this and think anything other than “damn, that’s pretty cool!”? Literally nobody and no company has any conceivable money to lose over this and couldn’t convince me otherwise. Law should have nothing to do with all this pussyfooting about legality.
Valve removed it because it used official N64 APIs that Nintendo holds as classified information. I think if it had totally been bottom-up crafted from scratch, it would have survived. But Valve does NOT wanna deal with a Nintendo lawyer.
Why would a grown ass adult put so much effort into an unlicensed dupilcation of copyrighted IP (Valve) and build it on top of a system from a company known for ridiculous enofrcement of IP that had a walled garden of access to their game system IP that is protected by the copyright cabal supported DMCA?
There’s more sides and nuance to all of this.
He could’ve made Portal in the style of a 90s console instead of directly declaring it N64 and only had to tend with permission for it as a mod from Valve’s sometimes permissive pov without crazy assed 'Tendo being involved.
Because that’s cool as fuck.
If he did it your way, that defeats the purpose of the constraints in the exercise.
It’s ‘cool as fuck’ right up until he gets personally sued out of existence by Nintendos balls crazy legal team.
The excercise maybe made sense 10 years ago, before we all became were aware of just how uninterested Nintendo gets over cool shit that used any of their licensed technology.
Valve has been quite supportive of fan projects like Black Mesa and Delta Particles and only demanding to remove Half-Life from the name to protect their trademark. But I guess they don’t want to risk involving Nintendo.
No surprise, but hopefully they can figure something out with Valve
“Hey, don’t use code for our dead game console we stopped manufacturing 22 years ago and don’t support anymore!”
Who gives a fuck, Nintendo?
It wasn’t Nintendo, it was Valve taking preemptive action because of how Nintendo has acted in the past…
It’s unfortunate, but it’s pretty reasonable given how Nintendo is.
Nintendo could benefit greatly by just allowing these kind of projects, but that would be out of character and we can’t be having that.
It’s a bit like if Metallica had just embraced Napster
It was Scorpions that went after Napster, no?
It was primarily Metallica.
It’s a shame, but their request doesn’t seem unreasonable. No one likes dealing with Nintendo’s lawyers. I hope switching SDKs works out!
Apparently even Valve’s lawyers don’t like dealing with Nintendo’s lawyers.
Stop with the fan projects already.
These companies don’t give a shit and will just squash any project that they can’t milk for funding.
Best case scenario you never release your work in fear of getting sued and nobody gets to play your game.
Make new projects inspired by these games and actually build your own fanbase instead of being at the behest of greedy corporations.
You know, you chose a bad post to get edgy.
Valve is actually one of the companies that treats fan projects very well, sometimes they’ll even let you sell your project on Steam (see Black Mesa remake).
It wasn’t even on Steam
That’s why it was taken down. Valve needs their cut.
Til valve gets a “cut” from free downloads
How the fuck is that what you got from my comment.
What would they be getting a cut of when its free, is what they’re saying.
And I’m saying the reason Valve took it down, was because it’s a free download not on their service. So Valve isn’t getting a cut.
