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Valve has been one of the few gaming companies that has been in good terms with the gaming community for most people. Their customer service and Steam support has been one of the best so far, and their success and support for the Steam Deck system has been also received fairly well worldwide.

On January 10th, 2024, Valve issued a DMCA takedown to the GitHub repository for the "Team Fortress 2: Source 2" project, which aimed to Team Fortress 2 into the Source 2 engine, the same engine that powers games like Half-Life: Alyx and Counter Strike 2. The takedown seems to have taken place due to porting and redistributing Team Fortress 2's assets into the Source 2 engine without permission, as stated in the DMCA notice on GitHub:

The original copyrighted work is Valve's game Team Fortress 2 ("TF2").

The TF2 assets have been ported to Source 2 without permission and are being redistributed by Amper Software in a game mode for Facepunch's S@box. Facepunch has not licensed any Valve assets for S@box. The unauthorized porting and redistributing of Valve's assets without a license violates Valve's IP.

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To make matters worse for TF2: S2, the project was undergoing an engine rewrite, and the takedown appeared in a time where the current source code for the engine is all but unusable, effectively killing the project in its entirety.

Sadly, "Team Fortress 2: Source 2" isn't the only project that has been taken down by Valve.

Another highly praised fan project based on a Valve IP has been the technologically impressive "Portal 64", which aimed to recreate the entirety of Portal 1 into the Nintendo 64 as a fully developed game that could run on the original hardware. The fan game had just received a new updated this past January 5th, 2024, titled "Portal 64: First Slice", which saw 13 of the 19 test chambers from the original game fully playable up to that point.

This also caught Valve's attention, and it prompted action from the company towards this project. However, unlike the Team Fortress 2: Source 2 DMCA takedown, this takedown seems to have been caused due to the project's usage of "Nintendo's proprietary libraries", as mentioned by the project developer, James Lambert, on his latest Patreon post:

So I have been in communication with Valve about the future of the project. There is some news and it isn’t good.

Because the project depends on Nintendo’s proprietary libraries, they have asked me to take the project down. I am letting all you know before so you can choose to withdraw your support before the next payment cycle. I do still plan on continuing the channel. I have plans to do VR powered by the N64, a computer that runs on air pressure, and some other ideas kicking around in my head.

I understand if you no longer support the channel but if you do stick around let me know what sorts of projects you would like to see. I may start a new game of my own or continue to find interesting ways to push N64 hardware. I haven’t entirely decided what I will do yet.

Also, but (sic) sure to generate the latest ROM before I take the ROM patcher down.

The ROM patcher for Portal 64 is still up at the time of writing, so those that still want to get the latest and final version of the Portal 64 project, can still do so before the ROM patcher for the project gets taken down in its entirety.

Team Fortress 2: Source 2 DMCA
James Lambert's Patreon

 

[codezer0]

They don't want to tarnish their relations with Nintendo.

What relations? Valve hasnt made a single piece of software for nintendo hardware, ever.

 

[PrincessLillie]

Here comes everyone to blame Valve without reading
To my understanding: TF2: Source 2 was taken down because they directly and illegally copied all of the assets from the original game, while it sucks Valve is in their legal right. Portal 64, on the other hand, wasn't taken down under the DMCA; this post's title is misleading in that regard. The developer was in communication with Valve and, upon finding that the developer was using libultra (aka: the leaked SDK), Valve kindly asked the developer to stop.
Don't get me wrong, it definitely sucks. But this definitely isn't a Nintendo case, where they take down anything and everything using their IP.

 

[linuxares]

What relations? Valve hasnt made a single piece of software for nintendo hardware, ever.

https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/portal-companion-collection-switch/ - sorry but what?

 

[SuperSVGA]

Relation to the project. This exact thing happened in the past.

They don't want to tarnish their relations with Nintendo.

Can be so simple that Nintendo told them to nuke it as well.

Valve has no obligation to Nintendo to issue a takedown, and Nintendo could have submitted the same exact thing with much more ease than going through Valve.
In submitting the DMCA Notice they certify that under penalty of perjury that they are the copyright holder or is an agent authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder.
This was all from Valve.

As a reminder, this is what a DMCA Notice from Nintendo looks like.
This is what a DMCA from Valve looks like.

 

[PrincessLillie]

To me this reads (at least partially) that even Valve are scared of Nintendo's lawyers

I mean, we learned that when they took Dolphin Emulator down from Steam.

What relations? Valve hasnt made a single piece of software for nintendo hardware, ever.

Yum, delicious nonexistent products.

 

[Clydefrosch]

Indeed, seems to me like Valve did a service to the guy if he indeed was using leaked SDK.
They basically dropped in before Nintendo took him to court directly. I see that one as an absolute good decision by Valve in this instance.
Sad to see that homebrew port being cancelled, it was very promising and a technological wonder, but the reasoning behind the termination was okay for me.
This also goes to show that Valve does know how much of a piece of shit Nintendo can be.

nintendo would've sent the same dmca , if they had sent one at all lol
valve valued their monopoly on selling the game portal 1, not this guys legal standing.

 

[Bladexdsl]

gabe must have been hanging out with nintendo too much

 

[orangy57]

it's a shame since the portal 64 development was awesome, the work that James Lambert did to make the first half look as good as it did was crazy. Turns out it used parts of the leaked SDK, would it still be around if it was made with devkitpro??


Sucks that Valve took TF:Source 2 down but for some reason I get the feeling that Facepunch rlly wanted Valve to take it down. Multiple S&Box blog posts have talked about how they don't want to be associated with Valve projects for their game and they very specifically go out of their way to not use any assets from Half Life:Alyx or other Source 2 stuff while developing the game even though it would make their lives a lot easier.
It's a shame to see it go but TF:Source 2 was just a lot of smoke & mirrors/hype, S&box is still basically unplayable because the updates keep breaking all the mods and even 3 years into development the mod was still pretty early on and glitchy.

 

[HRudyPlayZ]

Here comes everyone to blame Valve without reading
To my understanding: TF2: Source 2 was taken down because they directly and illegally copied all of the assets from the original game, while it sucks Valve is in their legal right. Portal 64, on the other hand, wasn't taken down under the DMCA; this post's title is misleading in that regard. The developer was in communication with Valve and, upon finding that the developer was using libultra (aka: the leaked SDK), Valve kindly asked the developer to stop.
Don't get me wrong, it definitely sucks. But this definitely isn't a Nintendo case, where they take down anything and everything using their IP.

Valve could've just worked on the TF2 modernisation themselves or hire the guy instead of being petty like Nintendo and just issueing a DMCA for TF2: Source 2 though, i mean CSGO already had that treatment even before it became CS2.
And they could've also gave the chance to the author of Portal64 to remove all Nintendo code too.
And it wouldn't have hurt their sales or anything.

But i guess it's Valve's turn to be hit by the enshittification wave.

 

[BlusterBong]

Something something corpos arn't your friend, something something Nintendo would have done it anyways becuase of the leaked SDK used and certainly wouldn't have been kinder, something something Gabe's company was always bad and poisoned the PC Market with it's own list of sins that impacted the industy (See DRM/Forcing Steam apon the consumer in the early 2000s)


Now that we got that over with.... Why the fuck isn't Nintendo and Valve (and especially Valve) making thier older or current devtools/SDKs open source? Nintendo? sure, it's mainly for thier consoles and internal development with a lot of their well known engines like LunchPack or other lesser known tools that they use that were homegrown falling under that umbrella, which isn't saying much since they have a seperate engine for third party developers that is better known for Nintendo themselves using it with the Bazel Engine so they don't have an excuse, only a pretty weak reason.

but Valve?, the only things they have as "Open Source" is Proton, which is just WINE with Gabe's tweaks and generaly meant to be used with Steam (which makes it a fork of WINE, so it wasn't made wholely by Valve, even worse since the offical Valve GitHub has yet another fork of WINE next to Proton.) , and a lot of shit related to Steam or SteamOS, mainly for SteamOS 3.0, which is just Arch Linux but changed to rely on Steam and the internal components designed for Steam (see the pattern), and Half-Life 1's Engine (more specifically GoldSrc's SDK).


If both companies (again, Valve especially) actually made thier devtools open source, not only would they make more money by being able to get more eyes to it, not only would we not have to deal with problems like this happening every single time the compnay attempts to issue a DMCA, but more significantly, they could save lots of time and money since having it be truely open source will let anyone contribute and make the costs of actually updating the engine cost practically nothing. It's much worse on both ends since fucking Dreamworks has done that with thier own in-house renderer.

 

[linuxares]

@BlusterBong Do you mean like how ID made the sourcecode for example Doom Opensource after X amount of years? If so I totally agree with you

 

[BlusterBong]

@BlusterBong Do you mean like how ID made the sourcecode for example Doom Opensource after X amount of years? If so I totally agree with you

Yes, that's exactly the kind of thing I was talking about, and it's pretty sad that something like IdTech1-4 was allowed to meanwhile similarly significant engines like it are locked in the proprietary box of the company for seemingly forever. and as I said in my post, fucking Shrek was able to figure this out while Super Mario and Gordan Freeman couldn't despite them haiving very significant, if not complete monopolies on their niches without being owned by any other company, and we wouldn't have to be dealing with DMCAs related to the SDK/Devtools if they were made open source.

 

[NinStar]

Team Fortress 2 is a game that doesn't belong to this era, while Valve is going out of their way to take this action they clearly don't give a fuck about remaking or even improving it themselves.

 

[Xzi]

Major overreactions from people here. Valve isn't gonna fight Nintendo's army of lawyers on behalf of a fan game or third-party developer, that was made clear after the Dolphin fiasco. Avoiding the use of original Nintendo code in your projects should be common sense.

TF2 Source 2 was a problem because it was a straight-up port of Valve's game to a new engine, with all the official assets. Moreover, it even sounds like something Valve might release. Whether intentionally deceiving or not, they can't have people thinking they were involved in what might turn out to be a buggy mess.

Team Fortress 2 is a game that doesn't belong to this era, while Valve is going out of their way to take this action they clearly don't give a fuck about remaking or even improving it themselves.

Nearly every recent Pokemon game is total shit. That doesn't mean the IP is up for grabs by whoever can do better. Not to mention that Valve still regularly updates TF2, and who knows if a bigger overhaul is in the works now that CS2 is out.

 

[K3Nv2]

Just be happy they keep your yaoi games alive.

 

[pustal]

Well, at least we know there won't be a third DMCA ever.

 

[lordelan]

Did anybody save one (or both) to the internet archive?

 

[ZeroFX]

after loads of projects that came out of valve's properties, two of them received dmca, maybe something is wrong with them.

 

[DuoForce]

Valve taking big notes from Nintendo I see

 

[smf]

valve valued their monopoly on selling the game portal 1, not this guys legal standing.

Yeah, I call bullshit on this having anything to do with nintendo and only valve using it as an excuse.

You need libultra to build mario 64 and the source code to that is still on github, and that is nintendo's actual code. While portal github didn't include libultra.