Valve asks Portal 64 developer to cease project following Nintendo concerns
eurogamer.netContrary to its usual image as a company open to fan games and mods, Valve has taken down two well-known community projects.
Both Portal 64, a demake to port the original Portal to the N64, and Team Fortress: Source 2, an effort to «recreate a new [Team Fortress] experience» in the Source 2 engine, were targeted by Valve.
On 10th January, the creators of each project released statements confirming the end of development and that each will no longer be available to download.
Portal 64 developer James Lambert released First Slice, containing the first 13 test chambers from the game, on 29th December. But on 10th January, he took the project offline. On Patreon (via Time Extension), Lambert revealed Valve had reached out and asked him to take the project down, a request he decided to comply with. Lambert stated the reason why Valve wanted him to stop development on Portal 64 was its dependence on «Nintendo's proprietary libraries».
Also on 10th January, developer group Amper Software updated its followers on the status of Team Fortress: Source 2, which it had already internally decided to move on from. Valve served a DMCA takedown to the project on GitHub, requesting the platform remove it due to IP infringement. «The [Team Fortress 2] assets have been ported to Source 2 without permission and are being redistributed by Amber Software,» Valve said in its DMCA notice. «The unauthorised porting and redistributing of Valve's assets without a license violates Valve's IP,» it added.
Hello everyone. We have some unfortunate news to share with you.
Today, we received a DMCA takedown from Valve on all our public GitHub repositories and all its forks made by the community.https://t.co/BQvtPwjPtn
This is quite the contrast to
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