Valve has just taken down two amazing projects, Portal 64 and Team Fortress: Source 2. This is a bit shocking as Valve has always supported modders.
While we were discussing the project's future internally recently, we already came to the conclusion to stop the development of the project due to the current state of the code being unusable anymore with s&box's recent major engine changes, and that we overall moved on from it.
— Team Fortress: Source 2 (@TeamFortressS2) January 10, 2024
Team Fortress: Source 2 aimed to to remake, improve, iterate, and create a new Team Fortress experience on Source 2 engine. On the other hand, Portal 64 aimed to demake the first Portal game for the Nintendo 64.
Portal 64, an open source N64 demake of Portal was also taken down by Valve.
This is unheard of coming from the company known for helping people with their IPs pic.twitter.com/BrQOIR5sCU
— Joey (@JoeyCheerio) January 10, 2024
According to the DMCA letters, Team Fortress 2: Source had assets from Team Fortress 2 being ported to Source 2 without permission. Plus, these assets were being redistributed by Amper Software in a game mode for Facepunch’s S@box. So, this takedown notice does make sense. Amper Software could have easily avoided it by simply removing all the original assets of TF2.
About Portal 64, Valve said the project was using Nintendo’s proprietary libraries, and that’s a no-go. I’m not sure why, but that’s the reason Valve gave.
So, that’s why we always say, grab those mods, remakes, and demakes as soon as we share them. In both situations, no one saw Valve coming to take them down. But, well, that’s exactly what went down.
And that is that. Let’s now hope that other promising mods will not receive any DMCA letters. And for God’s sake. Stop using copyrighted materials in your projects. If you want to demake or remake a game, avoid using its original assets. That’s one of the reasons why CryZENx’s Ocarina of Time UE5 Remake is still around.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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