Steam expands agian (ID onboard)

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2007-08-07 11:32am

For those of you now keeping tabs on good old Valve, they've signed an agreement with ID. Pretty much every ID game in existence, every mission pack, every series of game, is available on steam for purchase.

Steam wrote: Today's an exciting day for us at Valve. As Steam has grown over the past few years, we've been proud to bring a catalog of games to the community that we consider great. Today, we are especially happy to be able to deliver the games and franchises that have been among the most inspiring to us personally as game developers. Ten years ago, it was DOOM, QUAKE, Wolfenstein, Heretic, Hexen, and even Commander Keen that the founders of Valve discussed most often as benchmarks in our industry. At that time, Valve even licensed the QUAKE engine to build its first game.

Today at QuakeCon, id announced that its catalog is now available on Steam, making it easy for people around the world to play these legendary games. For super-fans, there's even a way to buy the whole list at once for an amazing price.

http://storefront.steampowered.com/v/in ... &SubId=440

60 dollars for every single id game in existance, from Wolfenstien 3D to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, add in every Quake game but four. Add in all the Hexen's and all the Doom's ever made, all ready to go. That's a dang good deal if I did not already own most of this.

Thoughts? With ID signing on board with Valve it makes me helpful they might get some more big names, perhaps even Lucasarts, nothing would make me happier than a updated or just XP friendly version of Xwing VS Tie fighter or Full Throttle.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2007-08-07 11:34am

Good, though the news are marred by the fact Valve is using DOSBOX illegally to run these games, rather then explaining what they are doing.

Redleader34 · Post by **Redleader34** » 2007-08-07 12:00pm

Why is DOSBox illegal? I thought Emulation was legal in the US?

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2007-08-07 12:02pm

Redleader34 wrote:Why is DOSBox illegal? I thought Emulation was legal in the US?

Dosbox is legal. Using Dosbox without properly following the licensing terms, as Valve is apparently doing (and is that actually true?), isn't.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2007-08-07 12:04pm

Redleader34 wrote:Why is DOSBox illegal? I thought Emulation was legal in the US?

It's not DOSBOX itself, it's their usage of it which runs counter to the DOSBOX EULA.

Hello, I just bought Wolfenstein 3D from Steam, and it came to my attention they're using DOSBox to play the game, now here's the deal, they've removed all help and config files, and any credit given to the DOSBox Team, they've also removed the GPL(General Public License), thus as fas as I know violating actual law.

I think this is a very poor thing to do, especially from a company like Valve and iD whom have been along so long, to use other peoples programs and not even give credit, not to mention violate the team by removing the GPL.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2007-08-07 12:07pm

They've apparently reinstated the missing files, but it's still dirty pool.

Qbix wrote:They are allowed to do that. Our license allows that.

However it seems that they removed COPYING and other files which aren't meant to be removed.

edit:
They seem to have to added those files again. Great!

The customized version of DOSBox is the normal 0.70 with a small loader. No changes to sourcecode of DOSBox were made.

Shogoki · Post by **Shogoki** » 2007-08-07 05:18pm

I really doubt they removed anything maliciously, they wouldn't have put all the stuff back in so swiftly, it was probably just some guy trimming files on the steam server just randomly deleting stuff he considered useless without looking at them first. It's impossible to be idiot free, since they corrected themselves so quickly they are fine with me.

RazorOutlaw · Post by **RazorOutlaw** » 2007-08-07 05:42pm

Aside from the DOSbox issues, I might get this eventually. Granted, I've already played ZDoom several times (entire DOOM 2 game with enhanced graphics) and a couple 3D versions of the original DOOM (although they were a headache to get running) and I did buy the DOOM Collector's Edition (which sadly won't work with previously mentioned 3D DOOM program) so I have most of their titles right there as it is. Oh, and Quake 4 came with Quake 2 and its X-pacs (even the one with the jump-in-water and crash game bug). I'm sure I could still get my hands on the original Quake (which makes me wonder if the original music would be included?)

Maybe I really don't have a reason to buy this!

I suppose, as big as a fan as I am, I'd like to see the games released so I could use my mouse and keyboard and bump up the resolution a bit. If they don't, I'll live.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-08-07 05:55pm

One is still supposed to distribute source w/ binaries or make them available somewhere though, rather than just pointing towards the original even if unmodified, as Mepis found out. Of course, if the authors of DosBox don't care, as it looks like they don't, then the issue is moot.

Shogoki · Post by **Shogoki** » 2007-08-07 06:12pm

They are probably more glad to know their product is being used as part of such a big name distribution than anything. The bulk of the outrage is coming from guys with no life posting in forums in a sort of geek "think of the children!" kindda way.

As one of the creators of DosBox said:

Can you people just calm down already. It's been like what 1 or 2 days after this thing has been released and people are already bitching about legal action or damage payments. It's not like we're losing money or whatever, it's euhm free software. There's lot's of open source programs being used for commercial ends.
Sure it's nice to be mentioned somewhere but even then there's no obligation to do so.
GPL violations can easily be sorted out in time if they just add or remove the necessary files.

And after the missing text files were added back into the release:

as far as we are concerned it is cleared up.

So nothing to see here, move along.

The funny thing is, even after they posted statements like the above several times, people keep coming and being outraged and demanding that they sue Valve/Id to teach the man a lesson and stuff, I bet the the community is getting more annoying for them than Steam ever did.