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Valve vents?

What to make of Valve’s recent fan project takedowns

A series of recent removals tells a complicated story.

Kyle Orland | 58
Credit: Aurich Lawson | Valve
Credit: Aurich Lawson | Valve

From Black Mesa to the recently launched Portal: Revolution, Valve has had a reputation for being pretty willing to let modders run wild with new creations based on its popular games. Recently, though, a series of legal threats and takedowns of Valve-related fan projects have some worried that the Half-Life maker is going the way of Nintendo in stringently enforcing its IP rights against projects and mods that it sees as infringing.

While there are differences between the situations leading to three recent fan project takedowns, there are also some similarities that hint at the specific types of fan projects that are drawing Valve’s legal attention these days.

What’s happened so far?

Valve’s recent efforts started last week, when the company sent a DMCA takedown request to Amper Software, a team of volunteers looking to remake the aging Team Fortress 2 in Valve's more modern Source 2 engine. The DMCA notice, as posted to Amper's GitHub, focuses on the team’s use of "TF2 assets [that] have been ported to Source 2 without permission" and the "unauthorized porting and redistributing of Valve's assets without a license, [which] violates Valve's IP."

S&box YouTuber Eridium discusses the Team Fortress 2 Source 2 port takedown.

In subsequent social media posts, the Amper team said they confirmed the DMCA request was genuine and said it was "the nail in the coffin" for a project that was already in trouble. The remake’s problems began back in September, when Facepunch's S&box (Sandbox) platform (which Amper was using to build its TF2 Source 2 port) announced an upcoming "major retooling" of its client/server architecture and Entity-based coding environment.

At the time, the Amper team reacted to those changes by saying they were "holding off our efforts until s&box's future gets clearer and more stable… For us at Amper Software, it may be time to explore new ideas." That situation hadn’t changed through last week, when Amper confirmed it had already "overall moved on from" the project even before the DMCA request.

"We cannot bring it back, and we've hit Valve's attention. It seems like they definitely don't want us to use their IP (which is totally fair and legal from them)," Amper said.

Portal 64

In the days after the TF2 Source 2 takedown, another high-profile Valve fan project came to a quick halt. As we reported last week, a project to "demake" Portal for the Nintendo 64 was taken down after "communication from Valve" over concerns that the "project depends on Nintendo's proprietary libraries."

Portal 64 developer James Lambert talks about why he doesn't blame Valve for the recent takedown.

The use of Nintendo’s libultra development library meant that "the project was probably doomed to be taken down from the beginning," Portal 64 creator James Lambert said in a YouTube video posted over the weekend. "I can’t say I didn’t expect this at some point," he continued. "I don’t blame [Valve] at all, and I don’t think you should, either. Don’t be mad at Valve here."

While Lambert said Portal 64 might still one day be ported to an open source N64 environment like libdragon, he added that he (and Valve) probably wouldn’t want to risk even that without Nintendo’s explicit approval. "I don’t think Valve wants to explore the legal territory of what happens when one large corporation backs a project that is an unlicensed game for another large corporation’s console, even one 30 years old…"

"It makes sense that Valve would have to tell me to stop the project," he added. "I may not be a big enough Target for Nintendo to come after, but Valve is…"

Team Fortress 2 VR

Shortly after the Portal 64 takedown, yet another project faced trouble. As the name implies, Team Fortress 2 VR was a full-featured virtual reality remake of the classic squad-based shooter in virtual reality, built on top of popular VR shooter Contractors. But after seeing what had happened to the TF2’s Source 2 remake, the TF2 VR development team announced via Discord that work on the mod was "being suspended indefinitely."

While TF2 VR hasn’t received a direct DMCA notice from Valve, a number of YouTube videos showing content from the mod were recently given copyright strikes. That, combined with "controversy surrounding Valve's recent treatment of mod projects" convinced the team that they might also be in "direct violation" if development continued. "We want to cooperate with Valve in order to guarantee we remain within legal boundaries while providing the best possible service," the team said.

TF2VR lead visual designer Scatter comments on the project's shutdown.

"I don't see TFVR coming back, but there is a chance, albeit a slim chance, that things can change," TF2VR lead visual designer Scatter said in a YouTube video last week. "I'd really appreciate it if things would change, but from what I see, this will possibly be the end of Team Fortress 2 in VR."

Who’s safe?

So what does this all mean for developers hoping to work on future Valve-related fan projects? Looking at these three recent takedowns together, it’s easy to see a few similarities.

For one, all three projects that were taken down last week were complete, direct remakes of full Valve games, not just mods that add new levels or content to existing titles. "I think while it's maybe out of character for Valve to take down fan projects like this, it's hardly surprising when you have their entire game uploaded," Garry’s Mod and s&box creator Garry Newman said in a social media post. "I somehow don't think the ‘old Valve’ would have let anyone port Half-Life to another engine and host it all publicly, either."

Portal 64’s Lambert also noted in his weekend video that the project is "different than some fan projects in the past" because it’s a "complete remake of one of their games on another platform… they seem open to mods, but not open to that." Lambert also points out that his N64 demake was not distributed through Steam, eliminating any upside Valve might see from mods that use its popular storefront.

Valve expert Tyler McVicker discusses the company's recent legal efforts regarding fan projects.

"Valve is still totally fine with you making mods on Source engine," longtime Valve-watcher Tyler McVicker said in a recent video. "It's a little less known if Valve is OK with you making fan games in Unreal or Unity. You're probably fine if all of your assets in code are original. However, if you're utilizing characters or visual elements from their own franchises, I don't know."

Valve has yet to respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica.

Listing image: Aurich Lawson | Valve

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Kyle Orland Senior Gaming Editor
Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.
58 Comments
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m
So I shouldn't have to worry about Portal: Reloaded (or Portal Stories: Mel) disappearing from my Steam library? I like Reloaded more than the official games it's based on. Would hate for it to end up in legal limbo.
The developers of that mod explicitly submitted to Valve for approval to get it up on Steam. So Valve is both aware of it and find it being available on their own storefront.
https://www.ign.com/articles/portal...ushed-prequel-campaign-adds-eight-hours-story
The projects that were taken down were being distributed via other means than Steam, and thus never had any Valve stamp of approval.