Portal 64 developer asks fans to not be mad at Valve
"The project was probably doomed to be taken down from the beginning."
The developer of the recently struck down Portal N64 port has shed some more light on what happened and told fans to not be mad at Valve.
Last week, James Lambert announced he had taken down the playable build of Portal 64 at Valve's request due to its dependence on "Nintendo's proprietary libraries".
In an update video uploaded over the weekend, Lambert said he expected Valve would ask him to take Portal 64 down "because it's their IP on a Nintendo console". "Somebody from Valve reached out to me and I was put in contact with their legal team," he revealed.
Once Lambert told Valve he was using Nintendo's LibUltra, the SDK for developing N64 games, the company asked him to stop working on the project, he said. "While I might not be a big enough target for Nintendo come after, Valve is," he continued. "I don't blame [Valve] at all," he added, "and I don't think you should either."
Valve's disapproval of Portal 64 wasn't unexpected by Lambert, though he said he had hoped to complete the project before being approached by the company. "The project was probably doomed to be taken down from the beginning," he concluded.
It seems Valve was pre-emptively making sure it would hear no complaints from Nintendo, unlike last year when Nintendo contacted Valve to request it prevent GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin from releasing on Steam.
Last week also saw the takedown of Team Fortress: Source 2, a community project to "recreate a new [Team Fortress] experience" in the Source 2 engine. The project was removed from GitHub after Valve served a DMCA takedown. Portal: Revolution, a community-made mod for Portal 2, is still available on Steam following official approval from Valve.