Update: Valve has now taken it down.
Here's a "fun" one for you. The developers behind the free and open source RTS named 0 A.D. (pronounced “zero-ey-dee”) have announced that someone (they don't know who) has put it up on Steam.
This is sometimes the perils of open source, as there's a lot of people out their looking to make a quick-buck and they don't care who they burn in the process. To be clear, the version of 0 A.D. that has released on Steam (with it missing the second dot in the name), is not actually from the people who make the game — even though Wildfire Games are listed as the developer on Steam it's not them. Confusing right? Valve allowed it and approved it, so it does make me curious what legal checks are even done for this to happen.
I was notified of this on Twitter, with the official 0 A.D. account tweeting:
Turns out the only reason @YouTube added the game back is because somebody uploaded 0 A.D. to @Steam without our consent. It also explains the typo in the name…
Another tweet sent today by the 0 A.D. team:
IMPORTANT: The person who released the game on steam today is charging 8€ for it. Please do not buy it. The game is free and always will be. It might contain viruses and other malware.
I imagine it doesn't have anything nefarious inside it, otherwise you really would have to wonder what Valve are doing…
Looking on the official game forum there's a topic asking about it, the developers seems to be at a loss as to what is happening.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Regarding the legal part, there is no CLA on 0 A.D., so if it had to be re-licensed to link to the Steam SDK, I have potentially 500 contributors who disagree with taking this into account. Some of them are part of a fork, and some of them are dead.
You have to be the copyright owner to post on Steam, but I'm not sure.
In fact, if the person had contacted us beforehand, we could have considered something, but the fact they totally ignored us and or our messages made it a matter of urgency.
We're actually really interested in what it would take to go on Steam properly, and whether we can at all so please get in touch if you know what's required.
We'd like to thank all the people that reported the game on Steam, and we're sorry it had to go to such extents.
StalePopcorn Oct 20, 2022
Not stupid, I gotta say - they might even make a few bucks before it gets pulled.
Why don't the actual devs put it on Steam, though?
Mindustry is a great example that a game can both be free and sold on Steam by the same people.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 20 October 2022 at 2:56 pm UTC
Kuduzkehpan Oct 20, 2022
Quoting: TheSHEEEPThat's a VERY cheap asset flip of whoever did that.
Not stupid, I gotta say - they might even make a few bucks before it gets pulled.
Why don't the actual devs put it on Steam, though?
Mindustry is a great example that a game can both be free and sold on Steam by the same people.
İ totally agree with this. Also 0 A D isnt open source game ? so what is the problem here ? i dont get it really.
dziadulewicz Oct 20, 2022
People game on Steam on Linux and expect to find most of their needs just there now. In this day and age any tinkering getting a game to launch is a huge no. Click Play and game. Or not.
That said, SuperTux does not launch on Linux in Steam because its a AppImage package and problems related to that. It's quite ironic that SuperTux does not work OOTB on Linux
Overly permissive licensing that allows people to do things with it that they didn't anticipate.
It is unfortunate.
slaapliedje Oct 20, 2022
Quoting: dziadulewiczMaybe this will speed up the process on getting 0 A.D. officially by the developers to Steam. I mean it's astounding it's not there yet still officially. Why not?This brings up a curiosity. Could developers get a game 'into Steam' but Steam essentially just installs the flatpak version, or distribution packaged version? Seeing as how most distributions have 0 A.D. in them. Then again, I can also see reasons why developers wouldn't want to put them into Steam either. Granted another possibility (mind you this loses a lot of discoverability) is to have distributions put in a post-install script that adds their games to the Steam UI if it's detected. That'd be rather interesting...
People game on Steam on Linux and expect to find most of their needs just there now. In this day and age any tinkering getting a game to launch is a huge no. Click Play and game. Or not.
That said, SuperTux does not launch on Linux in Steam because its a AppImage package and problems related to that. It's quite ironic that SuperTux does not work OOTB on Linux
there is nothing wrong with forking and charging for it, so long you respect the licence...
OpenGL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIwQc78ivJc
Zink
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_srMw2PW81g
Last edited by mrdeathjr on 20 October 2022 at 3:35 pm UTC
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