Some people would be angry at Valve for destroying hundreds of hours of work, but this hobby developer is doing the exact opposite: defending the lawyers
A few days ago, we reported on the end of two fan projects due to Valve’s intervention. And although quite a few people would now be beating their drums in anger to draw attention to this supposed injustice, the creator of Portal 64 is asking for understanding from the development giant.
We explain the background!
Fear of Nintendo
I don’t blame them, not in any way. And I don’t think you should either. Please don’t be angry with Valve. The project has probably been doomed from day one.
What does programmer James Lambert mean by this? His port of Portal for the Nintendo 64 was discontinued after talks with Valve. The main reason for this is his use of Nintendo’s own SDK for the Nintendo 64.
According to him, Valve fears a legal conflict with Nintendo if they were to give their blessing to the project after it recently left the beta phase and the associated attention – whether officially or simply by accepting further development.
Alternative? One option might be to switch to the open-source alternative libdragon, but this would not only involve enormous effort, but there would also be a tangible risk that even then Valve would pull the plug. Because, as Lambert explains, he has the feeling that Valve is in no way prepared to get into any kind of legal dispute with the software and hardware giant from Japan for his project
Why is Valve behaving like this? James Lambert suspects that Valve’s unwillingness to support him can be explained quite simply. Because he is not developing a mod for Half-Life or Portal, but his own game, which is based on Valve’s IP, for a competitor’s hardware – even if the latter is very old.
So Portal 64, unlike Black Mesa or Portal: Revolution presented in the video below, could not be distributed on Steam to promote sales of its own games or to profit from revenues.
What’s James Lambert up to now?
I’m currently thinking of developing my own game – simultaneously for PC and Nintendo 64.
In the end, at least the attention thanks to Portal 64 would help him in the long term – even if the project will soon disappear into the depths of the Internet.
Is what’s happening here unusual? No, Valve is acting no differently here than probably 99 percent of all industry representatives would. Any developer who handles copyrighted content without written permission from all rights holders risks not being allowed to publish the project. As in this case, not earning money with it does not protect against this per se
Your opinion is needed! Would you like to see him try to keep the project alive after all, or do you understand his dismissal all too well? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below:
