Valve wins case against Vivendi

By Games Industry.biz Published 30 November, 2004

Part of it anyway.

Half-Life 2 creator Valve Games has announced that a legal complaint filed against publisher Vivendi Universal Games in August 2002 has been upheld by a US court, but several other cases remain outstanding.

The complaint in question alleged that VU Games - or Sierra On-Line, as then was - had breached its contract with Valve by placing copies of the company's games in cyber cafes around the world.

The US Federal District Court in Seattle has now upheld that complaint, confirming that Vivendi's actions fell outside the terms of its license for Valve's products and that as such, the publisher was breaching copyright by distributing the games to cyber cafes.

"We're happy the court has affirmed the meaning of our publishing contract," Valve boss Gabe Newell said in an official statement today. "This is good news for Valve and its cyber café partners around the world."

However, the court has yet to decide what damages, if any, to award to Valve for this breach of contract, and this is only the first battle of what looks set to be a protracted legal war between Valve and Vivendi.

Several other complaints remain outstanding between the two companies - with Valve still waiting to hear judgements on other breach of contract claims related to alleged unpaid royalties and the delay of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero past Christmas 2003, while Vivendi has counter-sued with allegations that Valve misled the publisher regarding the development of the Steam online distribution system.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Tiger_Walts #1 7 years ago

    At least the ending of this story will be more satisfying than Half-Life 2's.

    ;)

  • Dirtbox #2 7 years ago

    The beginning of the middle of the end for poor old VU. Counter sue or not, they're up the creek without a paddle. Although they do have a couple of good developers left.

  • pjmaybe #3 7 years ago

    "At least the ending of this story will be more satisfying than Half-Life 2's.

    ;) "

    Oh I dunno, both involve an annoying bloke in a suit coming out on top again...!

    Peej

  • Tiger_Walts #4 7 years ago

    You mean the G-Man is actually the most evil thing in the universe....


    A LAWYER!

  • ChrisOTR #5 7 years ago

    Cheers for the spoiler Peej... Although I could have guessed that might be the case.

  • Khanivor #6 7 years ago

    Man, that's gotta sting. Your biggest IP tells you were to stick it and leaves with with the dregs.

    I wonder what sort of damages I can get from Valve. For breach of contract. I paid for a finished game but it stopped 2/3rds of the way through...

  • bunglebonce #7 7 years ago

    I try my hardest to avoid spoilers, but they really do pop up everywhere...

  • Hicksy #8 7 years ago

    go valve!

    :)

  • Clive_Dunn #9 7 years ago

    So Valve sues Vivendi for allowing CS to be played in cyber cafes ? That'll be the same Valve that had absolutely nothing to do with the development of CS then ?

    Seems a bit rich to me, sales ( and therefore royalties to Valve ) carried on for years after HL was released, primarily driven by the community of modders creating new and improved content. Cafes and LANS played a major part in establishing CS as no.1 competition based games. I'm not sure that would have happened if Valve had insisted on charging people to play the game ( as they subsequently did with Steam ).

    I think someone's ego is ruling their brain here.

  • Khab #10 7 years ago

    I wonder what sort of damages I can get from Valve. For breach of contract. I paid for a finished game but it stopped 2/3rds of the way through...

    You'd better start with Bungie on that one...

  • Royal Fool #11 7 years ago

    Vivendi aren't too far in the deep end yet - They have Blizzard which has been a big reason that they've kept themselves afloat. That and the Crash/Spyro series. Any other big sellers they have?


    "Seems a bit rich to me, sales ( and therefore royalties to Valve ) carried on for years after HL was released, primarily driven by the community of modders creating new and improved content. Cafes and LANS played a major part in establishing CS as no.1 competition based games. I'm not sure that would have happened if Valve had insisted on charging people to play the game ( as they subsequently did with Steam )."

    Yep, it is kind of weird that they're complaining about being successful, but that's the legal system for ya. It's like if someone steals a load of cash from you and invests it in some company - the guy suddenly gets immense profits from shares, but thankfully you can just sue him and grab both the money he stole and the profits he made off it. Backhanded genius.

  • space_ace #12 7 years ago

    can i get cyber cafe license directly from valve? serious question.

  • space_ace #13 7 years ago

    since cs needs hl, the owners should be valve...

  • polar #14 7 years ago

    Valve act as if Vivendi has raped them for years and they got nothing out of it. HL wouldn't have been the success it was wihtout Sierra.

    HL2 is a different story. From the looks of the charts (HL2 9th) Valve must have sold loads on Steam.

    I think VU's problem is that it's releasing loads of console games now and their developers were always geared towards PC. They joined this console generation way too late, hence most of those console games have been bargain basement material.

    With the exceptiion of Matal Arms and Riddick, both from external developers.

  • Macross #15 7 years ago

    ahaha! speak for yourself, steam was a flippin godsend for me, i hate cocking around with stupid discs and my bookcase is full enough with games as it is.

    Steam gets my vote (although i suspect im in a minority)

  • anyoldiron #16 7 years ago

    couldn't agree more, I found steam to be nice and painless

    apart from hearing about it going wrong for other people that is...

  • Subquest #17 7 years ago

    I guess I'm in a minority of folks who had zero problems with Steam, AND enjoyed the ending of HL2. The only problem with it is that I won't be playing HL3 anytime soon. It reminded me of childhood fave film Back To The Future - where they fly off into the future, whilst we sit around for years to find out what happened...

  • Psi #18 7 years ago

    ^ they are indeed ass hats, they also screwed anyone buying the game on dvd in the uk. you need the bloody disk in the drive the whole time unlike the steamdownloaded version.