Half-Life 2 Problems?

[Raven_Writer]

" The ongoing battle over Half-Life 2 Posted by: Tiffany Smith at September 24, 2004 6:30:41 PM

Gamespot are reporting today that court filings show that VU games now has the right to sit on finished Half-Life 2 source for up to six months.

Gamespot reports; "In court filings dated August 27, 2004, VU Games' senior vice president and deputy general counsel Eric Roeder entered the following statement into the record.

'Valve has announced that it will deliver a release candidate version of Half-Life 2 (HL2) (a game required under the 2001 SPA) to Sierra/VUG within the next few weeks. If Valve delivers a release candidate version that complies with the contract and is a Final Milestone, then VUG will have six months to release the product under the 2001 SPA. Valve is pressing VUG to release the product early within that six month window, and its representatives have made a number of public statements without our consent or concurrence that the product will be published and released to the general public in September of this year.'

The statement's implication is that VUG, angry with Valve's "public statements," could sit on Half-Life 2 for up to six months."

The report goes on to say; "According to the two companies' current software publishing agreement, Valve cannot release the game via Steam until the retail version is brought to market by VU Games. That point was confirmed by Valve director of Marketing Doug Lombardi who said, 'Half-Life 2 will be made available to customers who purchase via Steam at the same time it is made available at retail.'

When asked if VUG could be targeting a 'late-cycle' release date for Half-Life 2, Lombardi said, 'We've been asking, but Vivendi has refused to communicate an expected retail release date for Half-Life 2.' Additionally, Lombardi clarified Valve's perspective when it came to the company's desire to get the game into the hands of gamers. 'We delivered the first release candidate last week, and hope to deliver the final version very soon,' Lombardi said. For its part, VU Games declined GameSpot's requests for comment.

In other developments in the Valve versus VUG lawsuit, the judge hearing the case in District Court pushed the cutoff date for the two sides to present relevant documents (Discovery) from October 8, 2004 to December 31, 2004."



Related Links:

Gamespot article

Valve and VU games battling it out in court - GDNet article. "

source: http://www.gamedev.net/community/for...opic_id=272419

What does everything think about this problem? I've never been into Half-Life, but I do hope v2 will come real soon.