Hunt Down The Freeman aftermath: Unforeseen Consequences

[Scripten]

Don't think Enjay is, either.

I actually used to be a pretty big fan of Valve and I love the Half Life series, but I honestly thought about HDTF all of twice; once when it was first announced to be a ridiculous farce and now.

[Graf Zahl]

Welcome to the world of Big Business and their toxic lawyers. It is like always: The business side of a corporation can be as well-meaning as they like, but bring in one lawyer and they'll make it a mess. Some time they need to teach some Human decency at law school or all they produce is first grade assholes that only make things worse.

[Rachael]

@ Graf: I think that's side stepping the issue entirely, and not only that, it's not even the real problem.

Being a lawyer doesn't make you an asshole. On the flip side though, being an asshole doesn't mean you can't be a lawyer. It just happens to be a profession that offers a lot of power and control - something that a lot of sociopaths inherently want. That's what gives the profession such a bad face. Pretty much anyone can do it, if they're willing to hunker down and study hard enough, and plenty of people are book smart enough to be good at it, asshole or not.

Teaching human decency to a psychopath or a sociopath is largely going to be ineffective at making any real difference - all it does is teach them to mask it better, and seem more trustworthy - which makes them a whole lot more powerful and dangerous.

[Graf Zahl]

The thing is, I have seen how these people tick. Remember, I am not saying "lawyer" but "corporate lawyer". I had my experiences with those (indirectly through my former jobs.) and they were universally negative. This is an entirely different type of people who normally have zero concern how their actions may be received and how they may affect people. All they care about is the legal standing of the company they work for, and if that requires pissing off the customer - so be it.

And this entire thing reeks like some corporate lawyer's doing from top to bottom.

[Gez]

"Hunt Down The Freeman is the worst thing ever made by another human being." -Gggmanlives

Ggggggmanlives needs to become a journalist or a historian, and learn about the real world.

[Rachael]

The thing is, I have seen how these people tick. Remember, I am not saying "lawyer" but "corporate lawyer". I had my experiences with those (indirectly through my former jobs.) and they were universally negative. This is an entirely different type of people who normally have zero concern how their actions may be received and how they may affect people. All they care about is the legal standing of the company they work for, and if that requires pissing off the customer - so be it.

And this entire thing reeks like some corporate lawyer's doing from top to bottom.

I don't have much experience with corporate lawyers, but I have read about shenanigans that corporate-leaning law firms are capable of. Unfortunately, in my opinion, what really drives them is the same thing that drives corporations, themselves: money. And whatever their corporate bosses want, obviously. They are nothing without the evil slime bags who hire them - and while yes, you have to be equally as evil and equally as slimebaggy as the corporations that hire them to work for such a law firm, it's really a situation of dual perpetuation between the two.

[SouthernLion]

"Hunt Down The Freeman is the worst thing ever made by another human being." -Gggmanlives

Ggggggmanlives needs to become a journalist or a historian, and learn about the real world.

I don't know the rest of his work, but I imagine he was using hyperbole like AVGN.

[Chris]

What's interesting to me is that they say "Valve cut all communication". No C&D, no "we're not allowing you to use the IPs anymore", they just stopped talking. One could presume if they had permission, they still have it; no communication would mean no revocation of previously granted rights. People could still complete their projects and release it. So why exactly are projects being cancelled? Was Valve picking up some of their slack, they were relying on being helped for free, and now aren't? I'm not exactly sure what the complaint/accusation is here.

[Enjay]

The thing is, I have seen how these people tick. Remember, I am not saying "lawyer" but "corporate lawyer". I had my experiences with those (indirectly through my former jobs.) and they were universally negative. This is an entirely different type of people who normally have zero concern how their actions may be received and how they may affect people. All they care about is the legal standing of the company they work for, and if that requires pissing off the customer - so be it.

You're not kidding. I knew a corporate lawyer both socially and through my work. He could be a very nice, generous person but, when it came to something he wanted to achieve, he would go into lawyer mode and be completely cold and ruthless, screwing anyone over that he felt he "needed" to. I'm not even talking about big stuff. It could be the most petty of things and he would go in with all guns blazing and take no prisoners, regardless of how this left other people feeling either generally or about him personally - often to people who had done no wrong and didn't deserve the full treatment; they just happened to be in his way. I also used to be in contracting (a long time ago) and, again, the corporate lawyers there were certainly a special breed: utterly vile people who would screw over their own grandmothers if they felt it would allow them to achieve their goals. At least they were on my side in that situation but it's also one of the many reasons I chose to leave that industry. It's a real shame that our society and system are set up so that people of that type can rise and flourish because the way they operate is utterly free from compassion and empathy. "Laws are written for their spirit but executed by their letter" and that is more true in corporate law than anywhere.


As for Valve, Scripten is right. I'm pretty far from being a fan. I guess I must be getting better at sounding neutral(ish) when speaking about them though.

[Theuaredead`]

I will like to start off by apologizing for the bump, this thread was not brought to my attention when I was answering questions in-regards to the aftermath of ending L4D Zero.

I wanted to address certain things from this thread.

Left 4 Dead Zero, A beta remake of L4D...

L4D Zero was NEVER a beta remake. TRS' design was complete and we were RESTORING that version of the game. This is why production had to end on the project when Valve stopped working with us.

So what does this mean? Basically: Don't expect another Black Mesa or any remake/fangame of any other Valve IP again... (at least being sold and promoted on Steam like Black Mesa was.) ever. I can only pray they don't become overprotective with their IPs and start suing non-profit fangames like Nintendo.

That's really over-exaggerating the situation. I'd say, don't expect a licensed Source game beyond HDTF, any game that releases a licensed Source game beyond that point had gotten the license prior to HDTF releasing. Also don't expect any smaller team being licensed a Valve IP. I had expected that Valve would refuse any mod based around their existing IPs from going onto Steam, but right after I posted this announcement, Missing Information stated they finally got into contact with people at Valve (who were trying to ship post-HDTF and got no response.) I don't know why they haven't gotten onto Steam yet however, thought the train-wreck that was TF2008 to be the reason why, but we were able to launch another mod based on a Valve IP just fine. So basically, timing wasn't on my side and Valve got over HDTF around the time I posted the announcement.

I'd be interested in knowing if there's any other sources for these allegations about what Valve have been doing, besides just this one dev team.

Licensed Source game developers are hard to come by. But given the time and the info I was given by other people who work with Valve related community things, stuff points to HDTF upsetting Valve. Plus, it's never clear on what info is under NDA and what info isn't under NDA. Plus, we don't know how wide spread the issue was and people don't want the headache of having to deal with Valve getting upset at them for releasing said info regardless of NDA. Which is why I named no names, if they want to come forward, power to them, I'm not going to fling them into the spotlight.

Honestly, if what I'm reading here is correct, I see Valve as mostly to blame for the mess; negligent even. They supported the mod/game, effectively making it "official"; they released it on their platform and allowed it as an extension of their own IP. Now they seem to care enough about their IP (and associated issues) to get upset that the game was apparently a train wreck. (Although all the internet hyperbole surrounding this is already making me nauseas. It's only a game for goodness sake. You'd think it had jumped off the screen and murdered someone's mother by the way people are speaking about it. If you don't like it, uninstall it and see if you can get a refund. After that, it doesn't have to bother you ever again. )

Anyway, well boo hoo for Valve. If valve care that much about their IP and their reputation (etc), then they should have kept a closer eye on the project rather than allow it to be made, tested and released without them inspecting it and then getting all pissy later on - too late - when they find something they don't like but which they should have known about much sooner. And, if they are genuinely having this seemingly excessive knee-jerk reaction of a blanket restriction of other mods/developments, that doesn't cast them in a great light either.

TL:DR if Valve (or anyone) are licensing something that they genuinely care about, they should keep a closer eye on it rather than allowing an unknown developer to make a mess of it then cry foul later on.

This basically. Yes, while if HDTF never happened, we wouldn't be in the situation we were in, but it roots back to Valve not monitoring who they were handing their IPs to and what they were doing with it. And since Valve didn't monitor it, we got HDTF and it was a mess that made Valve angry on what they did with the IP. But instead of learning from their mistake, they went after other people who were working closely with their IPs and cut them off instead of monitoring of what they were doing (and we were super willing to show constant progress to Valve and TRS.) I wish I made that clearer in the announcement, but I personally assumed my thoughts would be transmitted to everyone, when in reality, I should of, ya know, said it.

What's interesting to me is that they say "Valve cut all communication". No C&D, no "we're not allowing you to use the IPs anymore", they just stopped talking. One could presume if they had permission, they still have it; no communication would mean no revocation of previously granted rights. People could still complete their projects and release it. So why exactly are projects being cancelled? Was Valve picking up some of their slack, they were relying on being helped for free, and now aren't? I'm not exactly sure what the complaint/accusation is here.

It's called in-order to restore something, you need the resources to restore it. We stated to both teams that if we could crowdfund money, we were willing to pay for licenses to the assets in question. But TRS just stated they weren't interested in money and Valve would ignore the offers (plus, Valve was giving Source licenses out to Greenlight/Direct developers as long as they removed Havok from the engine from what I was told.) Plus, Valve had us on NDAs to receive data and promised us data (they went in-depth on what data was found and promised, but I can't share that info because that's under NDA. )

[lil'devil]

So what does this mean? Basically: Don't expect another Black Mesa or any remake/fangame of any other Valve IP again... (at least being sold and promoted on Steam like Black Mesa was.) ever. I can only pray they don't become overprotective with their IPs and start suing non-profit fangames like Nintendo.

Well, Black Mesa: Xen just got announced a few days ago, so... :)

[JadedLexi]

So what does this mean? Basically: Don't expect another Black Mesa or any remake/fangame of any other Valve IP again... (at least being sold and promoted on Steam like Black Mesa was.) ever. I can only pray they don't become overprotective with their IPs and start suing non-profit fangames like Nintendo.

That's really over-exaggerating the situation

It's best just to take a lot of clownman's ranting with a grain of salt.

[wildweasel]

Thank you, Theuaredead`, that's a lot more insightful than OP.

[SouthernLion]

So what does this mean? Basically: Don't expect another Black Mesa or any remake/fangame of any other Valve IP again... (at least being sold and promoted on Steam like Black Mesa was.) ever. I can only pray they don't become overprotective with their IPs and start suing non-profit fangames like Nintendo.

Well, Black Mesa: Xen just got announced a few days ago, so...

WHAT? Yes. YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Clownman]

I honestly didn't expect you to come here and reply, But it was a pleasant surprise. I guess I misinterpreted/mistook what you said when it comes to Valve basically cutting ties with Source developers, I especially feared the worst as I just know the company has gotten more stingy as years have went by, And I honestly just expected them possibly to ditch their "nice guy" attitude when it comes to people working with their IPs after the whole situation, Especially with people like Nintendo going C&D crazy these days. (Nevermind also the fact Valve themselves had pretty much axed greenlight and whatnot after essentially scam artists or very "distasteful" developers [as in people who made very offensive games such as literally one being based off a school shooting for gods sake] abused the systems.) Thanks for the clearup though.