'Don't Be Mad at Valve Here,' Says Creator of Cancelled Portal 64
The creator of Portal 64 has said disappointed fans should not blame Valve for its recent takedown.
Portal 64 sought to revive Valve's 2007 classic on Nintendo 64 hardware. It was shuttered just a week after its developer, Joe Lambert, released a "First Slice" video demonstrating progress after two years of work, and promoted a Patreon he hoped would support the creation of the project as a full-time job.
Portal 64 was pulled in the same breath Team Fortress: Source 2, a fan project seeking to port Valve's classic shooter to the Source 2 engine, was following a DMCA takedown demand from Valve that blocked the group's GitHub repositories.
Lambert has published a new video explaining what happened, revealing Valve asked him to take the project down after it emerged it used the official Nintendo 64 SDK (software development kit).
“I can’t say I didn’t expect this at some point, because it’s their IP on a Nintendo console,” he said. “I was hopeful I could get it to completion, but this is not unexpected. When Valve realised Portal 64 relied on Nintendo’s proprietary library, called Libultra, “they had to tell me to stop.”
“It makes sense that Valve would have to tell me to stop the project after finding out it uses Libultra,” Lambert continued. “Because while I might not be a big enough target for Nintendo to come after, Valve is. So if they put their stamp of approval on the project, then that could be grounds for Nintendo to come after them. So, they didn’t want to touch that. And so I don’t blame them at all, and I don’t think you should either. Don’t be mad at Valve here. The project was probably doomed to be taken down from the beginning."
That’s that for Portal 64. So what’s next for Lambert? He said he's somewhat relieved at the shutdown, given the project probably had another two years of work ahead of it before completion. Now he’s starting to think about new projects, including the creation of an original game for Nintendo 64 and PC.
Image credit: James Lambert /
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