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.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/0AD
"Hello, 0 A.D. Gamers!
Helllloooooo
This is Kira speaking as a member of the 0 A.D. Forums!
[In no way do I own this game, all that stoof, belongs to them I just want a place to add in 0 AD Gamers without actually having to add them on steam! :)"
Sounds like a kid.
"Hello, 0 A.D. Gamers!
Helllloooooo
This is Kira speaking as a member of the 0 A.D. Forums!
[In no way do I own this game, all that stoof, belongs to them I just want a place to add in 0 AD Gamers without actually having to add them on steam! :)"
Sounds like a kid.
1 Likes, Who?
We totally agree that the person had the right to upload it to steam due to the license. The concern here is Wildfire Games' identity theft, the lack of certainty about the source code (Verified, not verified), the mistakes in the title, and especially the potential load on our servers if the person didn't change the multiplayer lobby, and bonus, the positive or negative reputation of the game's presence on Steam in an alpha version for Wildfire Games and 0 A.D. Empires Ascendant since the person is pretending to be us. As an additional cost, moderation might have been problematic.
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.
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.
14 Likes, Who?
Uberkeyser Oct 21, 2022
Looks like Valve has already removed it from the Steam catalogue.
Best way to avoid this (and potentially worse scenarios such as rigged/malicious versions) would be if the 0 A.D. devs just released it on Steam themselves. I heard there is some exasperation over a 100$ listing fee that Valve takes even for free games. But even ifso, it might be worth it. Battle for Wesnoth is on Steam for more than 4 years already. Since then I havent heard of any third party attempts to capitalize on the code.
Best way to avoid this (and potentially worse scenarios such as rigged/malicious versions) would be if the 0 A.D. devs just released it on Steam themselves. I heard there is some exasperation over a 100$ listing fee that Valve takes even for free games. But even ifso, it might be worth it. Battle for Wesnoth is on Steam for more than 4 years already. Since then I havent heard of any third party attempts to capitalize on the code.
0 Likes
Quoting: play0adWe totally agree that the person had the right to upload it to steam due to the license. The concern here is Wildfire Games' identity theft, the lack of certainty about the source code (Verified, not verified), the mistakes in the title, and especially the potential load on our servers if the person didn't change the multiplayer lobby, and bonus, the positive or negative reputation of the game's presence on Steam in an alpha version for Wildfire Games and 0 A.D. Empires Ascendant since the person is pretending to be us. As an additional cost, moderation might have been problematic.Thanks for coming here to give your thoughts directly. A quick idea: could you not set up a page and company on Steam, and leave it as Coming Soon? Plenty of other developers have done that. Gives you a way to ensure you're ready for an eventual release and protect the game too.
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.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: play0adWe totally agree that the person had the right to upload it to steam due to the license. The concern here is Wildfire Games' identity theft, the lack of certainty about the source code (Verified, not verified), the mistakes in the title, and especially the potential load on our servers if the person didn't change the multiplayer lobby, and bonus, the positive or negative reputation of the game's presence on Steam in an alpha version for Wildfire Games and 0 A.D. Empires Ascendant since the person is pretending to be us. As an additional cost, moderation might have been problematic.
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.
First off kudos to you. I've seen people get mad over forks before (Emby) and it's weird. You're 100% right that the line they crossed was trying to impersonate you. A common way for projects to protect themselves from these things is to trademark the name (Kodi).
Pixel Dungeon and at least one of it's forks is on Steam. Maybe you can reach out to their devs for advice on getting your game on Steam.
0 Likes
Quoting: Liam DaweThanks for coming here to give your thoughts directly. A quick idea: could you not set up a page and company on Steam, and leave it as Coming Soon? Plenty of other developers have done that. Gives you a way to ensure you're ready for an eventual release and protect the game too.
We could. Question is whether we are legally allowed to have a GPL2+ (Technically some our libs are GPL3 so we'd have to be careful) game on steam "as is" (re-licensing is impossible). If we are then we can try setting it up if Steam allows coming soon forever. If we aren't then we should never go there.
I imagine Steam might be more careful now so we'd have to get in touch with them somehow.
0 Likes
Quoting: play0adWe'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.
It's mostly $100 and agreeing to the Distribution and SDK Access agreements. The rest is mostly best practices stuff: localisation, branding requirements, controller support, stuff like that. The best bet would probably be to talk to other folks that have already done it: Supertux, Blender, RetroArch, are ones that come to mind. For rustling up the $100 you could take donations, potentially with a specific call to action. You might also consider Early Access as an option if you feel the game isn't quite ready yet, although you wouldn't want to stay like that forever.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: CatKillerIt's mostly $100 and agreeing to the Distribution and SDK Access agreements. The rest is mostly best practices stuff: localisation, branding requirements, controller support, stuff like that. The best bet would probably be to talk to other folks that have already done it: Supertux, Blender, RetroArch, are ones that come to mind. For rustling up the $100 you could take donations, potentially with a specific call to action. You might also consider Early Access as an option if you feel the game isn't quite ready yet, although you wouldn't want to stay like that forever.
Question is whether we are legally allowed to accept "Distribution and SDK Access agreements." Yeah I'll see if I can talk to my contacts there when the time comes.
The game isn't quite ready yet, the lag in late game might put off a lot of people. And most importantly, I don't know if the team is ready for the influx of people. As you can see for Spring it wasn't a smooth ride https://video.fosdem.org/2020/K.3.201/gamedev_spring_steam.mp4
We don't have that many active developers these days.
2 Likes, Who?
pleasereadthemanual Oct 21, 2022
Quoting: play0adWe totally agree that the person had the right to upload it to steam due to the license. The concern here is Wildfire Games' identity theft, the lack of certainty about the source code (Verified, not verified), the mistakes in the title, and especially the potential load on our servers if the person didn't change the multiplayer lobby, and bonus, the positive or negative reputation of the game's presence on Steam in an alpha version for Wildfire Games and 0 A.D. Empires Ascendant since the person is pretending to be us. As an additional cost, moderation might have been problematic.These are good reasons to be concerned. This person clearly acted maliciously, and it's no surprise that it was quickly removed from Steam (for several reasons).
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.
I've heard of similar things happening with people impersonating an author/publisher and publishing their book on Amazon or even paying someone to voice an audiobook for a work they don't own the copyright to and collecting royalties for months, even after telling Amazon about it, and when it was finally removed, never seeing any of the royalties, of course. Valve is far quicker on the mark, it seems.
If you're curious how that relicensing exercise panned out for VLC (they did get it relicensed in the end), here's their press release on the matter: https://www.videolan.org/press/lgpl-libvlc.html
QuoteThe modification affects the VLC engine, also known as libVLC (and libVLCcore), allowing applications or plugins based on the VLC engine to be built under non-GPL licenses. Some libVLC bindings for other languages have already changed license too.
The license of VLC media player will continue to be GPLv2 or later. This will not impact normal users of VLC in any way.
All the developers have agreed to the relicensing, but a famous one, who refused to answer. His code was therefore rewritten.
As another user mentioned, Super TuxKart is licensed under the GPL and was published on Steam, so it is evidently possible under the right circumstances. I don't imagine it involved relicensing, but Valve's wording seemed to suggest that copyright holders needed to agree to make an exception for the SDK. That also seems unlikely to have happened in the case of Super Tux Kart.
3 Likes, Who?
Looks like Steam pulled it, at least US region sales.
0 Likes
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