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by crote11 hours ago |
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upvoteby Cthulhu_9 hours ago|
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Giving things away for free (at one point) is not the same as making it public domain or relinquishing your (copy)rights. Source available is not the same as open source. Open source code does not mean open source assets/product. I find it weird that this needs to be explained in this community.
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upvoteby crote8 hours ago|
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> Giving things away for free is not the same as making it public domain or relinquishing your (copy)rights.

Obviously. But it does kill the usual "piracy is bad because companies lose money" argument - especially for a 22-year-old game.

> Source available is not the same as open source.

Obviously. But it does show that Valve is more interested in preserving old genre-defying games for the general public, rather than milking every last cent of revenue out of it.

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upvoteby nba456_10 hours ago|
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>Besides, IP law is dead. The rise of AI made it pretty clear that you can steal literally anything without consequences.

God, AI keeps making life better than I could've ever imagined!

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upvoteby zombot9 hours ago|
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It only works like that for the Big Thieves. Us regular folks get screwed over just like before.
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upvoteby dminik11 hours ago|
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GoldSrc (HL1 engine) is very much not open source (or even source available). There's at least one open source remake (which is possibly illegal due to using the SDK) but no official release.
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upvoteby crote8 hours ago|
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https://github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife is the HL1 engine, is it not?
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upvoteby bpye8 hours ago|
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That's just the SDK - which does include the game code but not the engine. Xash3D is the reverse engineered engine alluded to above.
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upvoteby flordaman10 hours ago|
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No no, you can't steal anything without consequences, only big corperations who are making slop machines(tm) can.
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upvoteby account429 hours ago|
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Turns out "too big to fail" doesn't just apply to reckless financial behavior.
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upvoteby foldr9 hours ago|
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HL2 is not free: https://store.steampowered.com/app/220/HalfLife_2/
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upvoteby crote8 hours ago|
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It was available for free as part of its 20th anniversary update: https://overclock3d.net/news/software/half-life-2-is-availab...
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upvoteby foldr8 hours ago|
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That was a special promotion with a defined end date. The game is not free. The only legitimate way to obtain it currently is to pay for it. Together with the false claim about HL1 being open source, you're really adding a lot of misinformation to this thread.
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upvoteby rvz7 hours ago|
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> Yeah, but Valve isn't losing out on any money, and there's no way they're going to risk the negative PR blowback they'd get for a takedown.

So that makes it okay to pirate and steal games developed by your fellow indie game developers as well?

> Besides, IP law is dead. The rise of AI made it pretty clear that you can steal literally anything without consequences.

Try doing the same thing to Nintendo.

Even large companies like Anthropic were not going to risk going to trial and getting bankrupted of over $120B+ in damages in using pirated copyrighted eBooks for training. The best case was a settlement for $1.5B which that is a record settlement in copyright law.

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