Link: https://nitter.net/TeamFortressS2/status/1745157814295617767
Valve is generally supportive of mods (hell, a Portal 2 mod was just released a few days ago) but it seems like recreating Team Fortress 2 was pushing it… Really sad, honestly. I really hope Valve would just strike a deal with these devs and make it official rather than throw away the insane amount of effort they put into re-building TF2.
Valve are well within their rights here. This isn’t new content or transformative. It’s literally trying to remake the same game using the same engine. These devs knew they were playing with fire. Never come between GabeN and his hats.
We need to change IP and copyright law to add a “use it or lose it” clause for games that have been left to languish for eternity.
just result in companies releasing even shittier games just to protect their IPs.
Not eternity 95 years.
It being within their rights doesnt make it less shitty. Fuck IP
Unfortunately it’s not just well within their rights, it’s their legal obligation. The stupid situation that is America means that for them to be able to maintain their claim of ownership on the IP trademark, they have to both actively use the trademark and actively police unauthorized use of the trademark by others. If they don’t, they risk losing the right to claim the trademark, which wouldn’t just mean independents running servers for the game, but also would mean unscrupulous entities could produce and sell merchandise featuring the trademark en masse without having to seek permission from or pay any commissions to Valve.
It’s shitty, but it’s more shitty because of the stupid system we’ve built than because of any intentional malevolence on Valve’s part, imo.
Important caveat: I am not a legal professional and it is entirely possible my understanding of trademark law is flawed, but this is my earnest understanding of the situation.
DMCA has nothing to do with trademarks
Well then I got nothin’ 🤷♂️
No, it isn’t.
Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc.
It is hardly incumbent on copyright owners, however, to challenge each and every actionable infringement. And there is nothing untoward about waiting to see whether an infringer’s exploitation undercuts the value of the copyrighted work, has no effect on the original work, or even complements it. Fan sites prompted by a book or film, for example, may benefit the copyright owner. See Wu, Tolerated Use, 31 Colum. J. L. & Arts 617, 619–620 (2008).
Making a Portal mod is much different than possessing and using the original source code of a game. I don’t understand why they thought they could get away with such a high-profile title as TF.
if there’s one rule to modding valve games, it’s “don’t touch GabeN’s hat and skin sales”. TF2 despite being a real mess and valve’s server being practically unplayable, still brings in millions of dollars of gambling money, and now that CS2 keys are not tradable TF2 keys are in demand for laundering money. of course they are gonna take down a direct remake of their live service game minus all the bots and shitty cosmetics.
Not exactly. Plenty of CS mods give players knife skins and things while on the server for doing things in the server. They only work while in that server, but Valve doesn’t care. Releasing a product that could be mistaken for an official product is not smart though. They just released Counter Strike 2 (which was called CS Source 2 for a long time) so they have to defend their IP from confusion. This isnt likely about money because this wouldn’t hurt that in the slightest. Who had even heard of it before this post? It’s just something they have to do legally.
Portal 2 isn’t an ongoing live online multiplayer game with in game purchases.
Seeing the down votes I have to say this: He has a point here. TF2 is a F2P game that generates its revenue these days from marketplace and key transactions. If someone were to remake the entire game and it was allowed to release, it would most assuredly damage TF2’s revenue. A mod for Portal 2 has more potential to generate revenue because anyone interested in the mod that doesn’t currently own Portal 2, would have to buy the game.
At the end of the day, Valve is still a business. This news sucks for people who love playing games, but is entirely not unexpected.
Is it right to push more gambling based micro transactions in a game that lacks actual support?
If this were any other company people would be raging
If this were any other company people would be raging
If this were any other company, I’d be saying the same thing. Nintendo shuts down shit left and right; most of them are mods for games that the only way to use the mods is via emulation. And it’s a lot easier to pirate a game for that than it is to dump one you own legitimately.
It’s certainly within their right to protect their shit. The ethics and morality of what that shit happens to be is irrelevant to the copyright discussion.
Also: TF2 is still supported… It still receives regular updates. It had one on the 9th.
Those “updates” are pitiful. As far as I understand the vast majority of update content is still being supplied by the community. The game is still flooded by hackers with no word on when that will be addressed if ever.
Valve seems okay with TF2 mods on the older engine… See https://tf2classic.com/
I feel like the TF2Classic ran into dmca issues earlier in their dev cycle as well.
Edit: yes they did https://twitter.com/tf2classic/status/1436328611485818880
Is tf2classic any good? I loved tf2, but the bots just made it unplayable
it’s also important to consider that recreating an entire game like Tunnel Rush Team Fortress 2 would involve legal and intellectual property considerations.
The GitHub DMCA report linked in that post seems fake to me. It’s unprofessionally written and has many mistakes and inconsistencies across it.
Being a TF2 fan is fucking suffering…
being a valve fan is fucking suffering.
They used to make great games, but they have no need to anymore cause steam brings in $$$$Texas.
When does valve drop everything 3? There must be development for all the sequels working in the background, right?
no I don’t think so. they run steam instead.
It seems like it would have been a lot more friendly to have reached out personally first instead of via lawyers initially. Seems like these guys would have been receptive.
Maybe there’s some legal reason they couldn’t, but doesn’t seem like it to me.
how do you know they didnt
I guess I don’t. I would have assumed the team would have mentioned it. Especially if there was communication, but it moved forward to DMCA request anyway (i.e. there was a disagreement or something). But seems like the team would have responded pretty quickly.
But yeah, I don’t know for sure.
Still, it seems way more likely that Valve legal just went straight to DMCA.
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I’d be more supportive of Valve if Team Fortress 2 wasn’t a dumpster fire to play in 2024. The game is infested with bots that make anything outside of independently moderated community servers unplayable.
Even Counter Strike 2 has dogshit anticheat despite the boasts that VAC Live was a solution that could surpass Vanguard, to the point where the only good competitive experience you can have is to play on FaceIt or ESEA servers with their own ring 0 anticheat solution.
If you can only have a good experience by installing malware, you don’t have a good experience.
I really should finish building that nvidia jetson based hardware anticheat that’d allow anyone to cheat even in vanguard protected games with perfect accuracy for just ~150$. Ring 0 anticheat’s only use is to spy on you and yet people will continue defending it until someone’s proven just how useless it is.
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I just wish Valve wasn’t pulling a Nintendo and not aiding the fans of a game they care about, instead of just sitting on it and claiming they are doing all they can for it.
How long has it been since we were promised a major update after Jungle Inferno? How long since Valve promised community fixes? How long since Valve delayed it with “we’re working hard on making it next update”? How long did Valve say they heard the community loud and clear about the bot crisis?
TF2 is my all time favorite game, but it’s no longer really playable in 2024. Casual servers are infested with bots, and there’s been no major changes to the game since 2017. I wish Valve cared about the game as much as the community still does dozens of years later.
They most certainly made a decision based on priorities and TF2 wasn’t a big enough one for them to jump on. If there were enough users who would pay clamoring for it, they’d move.
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