Image: Amper Software. Edits: dead.place.
Valve has issued a successful DMCA takedown against the GitHub repository of Team Fortress: Source 2 (TF:S2), an open source game mode of Facepunch’s s&box (a third-party Source 2 game development platform), that aims to recreate Team Fortress 2 in the modern engine.
The company alleges that Amper Software, the team behind TF:S2, is using the ‘original copyrighted work’ behind TF2, that ‘TF2 assets have been ported to Source 2 without permission’, that they are ‘being redistributed by Amper Software without permission’ for the s&box game mode and that Facepunch, as the host of the game mode, has not licensed the TF2 assets, and so are in violation of Valve’s intellectual property.
The notice Valve served to GitHub also states that they do not have Amper Software’s contact information. This strongly implies that Amper Software never sought permission to create TF:S2 in the first place.
Valve allows developers to create ‘Source mods’, games derived from modifying existing Source engine games.
However, as Zool Smith points out, s&box is a heavily modified version of Source 2 and can be considered a game development toolkit in its own right. It is no longer just Source, so TF:S2 has lost license to use the works. The team aren’t creating a Source mod, which Valve allows, they have made a mod utilising Valve’s assets for another engine, which they don’t.
This gives the company grounds to seek takedown.
TF:S2 uses Valve’s copyrighted work extensively, because if they didn’t they wouldn’t be able to make Team Fortress 2 in a different engine. It would just be a different game. They used Valve’s copyrighted works to make a game that sidesteps the demand for TF2 (an alternative to the original game that wouldn’t have cheaters), using a different engine other then Source, without permission from the company.
Team Fortress 2 has been plagued by an onslaught of automated, cheating bots. The kind that snap onto your head, killing you instantly, before spamming the game’s chat feature with slurs. The kind that fill up half the server, making the game impossible to play for regular players.
Given this, a criticism of the move I’ve seen from commenters on the website formally known as Twitter, and popular YouTuber Uncle Dane, is that Valve should DMCA developers of botting and cheating tools instead.
Put simply: Valve can’t.
They did not create the source code behind these tools, and so they have no grounds for action. The source code of Team Fortress 2 leaked in 2020, so there is a not insignificant chance that some of Valve’s code could be found within them. But until someone takes the time to investigate this avenue, assuming that the creators even used some of Valve’s code, they are free to continue development. Valve will have to act through other means, i.e. VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat), to tackle the problem.
Everything surrounding Team Fortress 2, that Valve had a hand in creating, is their intellectual property. Assets, designs, maps, code. Everything.
And the game is not abandonware quite yet. It is still actively being maintained via updates, its servers are still online, it is still listed on Steam. The IP is still being worked on, to an extent.
Regardless, Valve has the right to defend their works against unauthorised usage. TF2 not receiving a significant content update for years doesn’t change that.
This isn’t a case of live and let live, this is copyright law.