Amper Software, the team behindTeam Fortress: Source 2,and James Lambert, the dev working onPortal 64,have statedthat they’reending developmentof their fan projects following cease and desist demands from Valve.
Team Fortress: Source 2was a fan project aiming to port Valve’s 2007 multiplayer shooter,Team Fortress 2,over to the newer Source 2 engine. While the team hadpaused development in September, they were hoping to resume at some point, but the DMCA has made that pause permanent.
Meanwhile,Portal 64is a project intended to demake 2007’sPortalto run on the Nintendo 64 hardware. Just a few days ago, the developer was celebrating the release of the game’s “First Slice,” which demonstrated the game’s progress.
TheTeam Fortress: Source 2takedown seems rather understandable since Valve still supportsTeam Fortress 2and may one day want to port it or create a sequel themselves. The DMCA posted on thepublic GitHub pagecites that their reasons are due to Valve’s own assets being used in a project, though that hasn’t stopped some other fan games based on their properties frombeing publishedandeven soldon Steam.
Meanwhile, James Lambert says that Valvehas statedthat they’ve requestedPortal 64to be taken down because “the project depends on Nintendo’s proprietary libraries.”
This is somewhat surprising since Valve has long supported fan endeavors based on their games, going as far as allowing them to be sold as retail products on Steam. Either this demonstrates a shift in the company’s policy toward such projects, or they actually have reasonable concerns toward these particular projects. Either way, it’s not a great look directly aftertheir announced shifton their storefront policies in regards to AI.
