Doug Lombardi Interview

[CSN NewsBot]

Gamespy has interviewed Doug Lombardi of Valve Software concerning the recently announced legal battles with Vivendi Universal.

GameSpy: It appears that part of Valve's complaint with Sierra started over a cybercafé distribution dispute, and yet Valve has been doing something similar with the CS:Source beta and STEAM. Would you consider that an accurate comparision?



[Doug Lombardi]: Yes, this began with Valve suing Vivendi for copyright infringement back in 2002 over their unauthorized distribution of our products to cybercafé's for commercial use. Valve owns the right to distribute its games in the cybercafé channel.

You may read all about what Mr. Lombardi had to say about this situation.

[CSN NewsBot]

Doug Lombardi Interview

After the official announcement that Half-Life 2 has gone gold, Doug Lombardi spoke with HomeLAN Fed on a variety of HL2 related topics. As if the gold announcement wasn't enough to handle, Mr. Lombardi has given a status update on Team Fortress 2.

HomeLAN - Finally, we have to ask: is Team Fortress 2 officially a dead project or is that game in some kind of production?



Doug Lombardi - TF2 is not dead at all. After we announced TF2 on the HL1 tech, we made the decision to move it to the Source Engine. It is still in development and we will be announcing more on that title after HL2 ships.

Have a minute to spare? If so, click here for an in-depth interview.

[CSN NewsBot]

Doug Lombardi Interview

G4TV spoke with Doug Lombardi regarding an upcoming Half-Life 2 expansion entitled "The Lost Coast". Said expansion will utilize a new Source engine technology from Valve Software called "high-dynamic range lighting," intended for users with high end systems.

What is "The Lost Coast?"



"The Lost Coast" is a single mission that takes place on the Highway 17 area of the game. It is specifically a piece of content that is aspiring to push the envelope in a couple of areas that are more on the technical and art production sides. While it is a new mission and whatnot, it is a free, new thing for all the owners of Half-Life 2 that have the high-end hardware. What we're specifically trying to do here is not say, "Here's this big, new piece of content for Half-Life 2," but instead say, "Here's this new technology that's being introduced to the engine," and it's being manifested in the way of a new, short mission that people can check out.

Be on the lookout for "The Lost Coast" sometime in Spring. Until then, read what Mr. Lombardi had to say about the upcoming HL2 expansion.

[CSN NewsBot]

Doug Lombardi Interview

The staff over at Half-Life2.net recently sat down for a little Q&A session with Valve's Doug Lombardi. Included in the interview, Doug sheds some light on his personal feelings on the success of Half-Life 2, criticisms of Steam, Day of Defeat: Source, Half-Life 2: Aftermath, and Source's HDR technology.

Halflife2.net: Steam has also caused a lot of controversy, especially since Half-Life 2's release in November. People's main issues being various bugs, connectivity issues, updates supposedly creating more bugs than they fix and the whole issue of Steam prominently being an online tool and as such often needing an internet connection, even with Offline Mode. Do you feel that Steam has been received well and can you see Steam being developed further and continued to be used for future projects?



Doug Lombardi: Absolutely. In addition to allowing us to sell our games, it has enabled the prevention of the "zero day" piracy problems other major releases incurred between gold and their launch days last year. It's also allowed us to serve several updates directly to our customers since launch — including the delivery of new games such as Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and soon Lost Coast — and aided in our anti-cheat efforts. And in the coming weeks we will be announcing games created by other developers that will be made available via Steam.

Be sure and read the rest of this interesting article over at Half-Life2.net.

[dizzle]

well valve has the right to do it, and not vivendi... wtf thats like if you gave me a music cd, and i go around giving it to other people and make money off of it... wtfizzle

[dragocore]

Now I'm sure most of you have thought about this but I'm trying to understand this: Vivendi Universal doesn't want HL2 to be distributed through Steam. Don't you think Vivendi would of got mad (or did?) with all the HL2 phase preloads that some have preloaded so far? That's HL2 content on their hard drives. Though we can't access it, its still there.



What do you think about this?

[[CyW]-=BigBear=-]

I think Valve has all the rights to do whatever they want with their work, unless they have signed some sort of contract that gives Vivendi all rights on sales.. But I don't think Vivendi has that, because Valve already said they financed 100% for the production of HL2 themselfs, so they would be stupid to give Vivendi 100% of sales.. I think Vivendi only has the rights of retail sales, not online sales thru Steam.. And offcourse Vivendi doesn't like Valve "stealing" sales from them with Steam, but what can they do? Nothing imho, maybe start making their own games and sell those, like EA..



Anyway, I just want HL2 to go gold and be released, enough of these "unimportant" news items!!!

[DaRk-AnGeL]

Gamespy wrote..

Valve's discontent began with Sierra distributing HL in cybercafés, but oddly enough, its own Steam technology allows for that very same tactic as we have witnessed through the beta test for its Counterstrike: Source, which was offered to cybercafés only.

Ummmmmmmm, wow, they took the time to gather information didn't they ?!??!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Poor form on the part of Gamespy, imagine writing an interview when you don't even know what the f*ck is going on. Good Job Guys !

[dragocore]

You know, I miss the days where you didn't know about the smallest things. The internet and media have gotten really big and I remember when I found out about games by just going to the store and finding out that way (along time ago). I'm sure a lot of you remember this. It was, for one, a lot less stressfull for us. Now we have tons of media on games, its developers and the publishers. I'm just glad we didn't find out about the trial in 2002. Sometimes we shouldn't know about some things imo.

[DaRk-AnGeL]

dragocore wrote..

You know, I miss the days where you didn't know about the smallest things. Sometimes we shouldn't know about some things imo.

Is this a referral to Team Fortress 2 and that Duke Nukem game, both have been in production for over 5 years

[dragocore]

DaRk-AnGeL wrote..

Is this a referral to Team Fortress 2 and that Duke Nukem game, both have been in production for over 5 years

No. Its sometimes good not to know about stuff like this trial. I mean, it sheds some light on possible delays but ... we were doing just fine knowing that the RC was at the publisher. I mean, I don't think Valve should of told us that they sent in the RC, because how many game developers tell the community that they have sent in their first RC? We all know that it takes a few times for an RC to pass. Just small stuff like that, we shouldn't know about. We knew that DOOM 3 was in beta testing for a while but we didn't know that id Software sent in their first RC. We just heard a gold statement. Now I know that each game dev. does their own thing.



Its just when things like this come up, we all get upset and is it worth the hassle?

[DaRk-AnGeL]

It is worth the hassle, because there are a greater amount of gamers today, and a much greater demand for games, it was different back in the 'old days' where games could be developed and released in a year, but because of the aforementioned growing demand for games, people now hate being kept in the dark.

This is what companies with poor customer care do, Valve do not keep us in the dark as much as other companies.

[CheesyPeteza]

That was a terrible interview. They didn't even ask him if there was any possibility of Vivendi delaying HL2 like they did CZ.

[abysmal]

Specifically i wouldn't class steam as publication, so it cant be breaking a contract. Still it is another form of distrobution that was probably not mentioned to VU till it was nessicary.



At the end of the day VU have a right to be angry, Valve are in a contract with them to publicate and distrobute Half-Life 2, and it being the follow up to one of the biggest selling games of all time, VU are obviously going to want the lion's share of sales. Steam hinders this somewhat, with money going directly to valve through all of the steam sales.



And lets face it, the ease of simply clicking an icon on your desktop is a lot more enticing than walking all the way down to the shop and buying it.



VU certainly have a lot to be worried about here, and to be honest I can see HL2 being delayed until this is resolved.

[file13]

Gamespy is terrible.