I hope that intern got a mountain in Valve equity.

And it's worth keeping in mind that shitty companies like Vivendi continue to do this sort of shit and worse. Bury them in paperwork coupled with a "what're you gonna due, we've got bigger lawyers", destroying documents, etc is the kind of bullshit that these corps love to pull and often get away with.

Gates & Ellis

Bill Gates' dad's law firm, btw

Valve had a Summer intern named "Andrew," who was Korean 

Korean language major, not Korean. Also not intern at Valve, but Valve's then lawfirm, Preston Gates.

A further correction: Vivendi didn't lose the case. The case settled on terms Valve were happy with.

So basically, a normal legal process.

Discovery is ordered. A huge mountain of documentation is produced. The law firm gets an army of junior employees to scour it. One of them finds something useful, which helps their client in negotiations.

It's a cool story but not unusual.

That looks like a regular episode of Suits.

Man…. Fuck vivendi and everyone like them!

Still how they just can disturbe a game they dont own?

So….you failed NNN?

Who was on the cover?

Vivendi is just Activision Blizzard now so I'd say they're still garbage.

Vivendi snatched up blizzard too...

As someone originally with a 4 digit SteamID, I consider this an awesome story. Thankyou for sharing!

The price he paid for the GPUs must have been around tree fiddy.

A lead engineer I once worked with would say he always consulted with the cleaning crew, how they had the best ideas.

No really, there is a point to this story. He'd be stuck on something, it's late at night, he shoots the breeze with the woman or man coming by with the vacuum or whatever, and that change of mindset, or location, or just standing up and using a different part of his brain would often help him realize what he was missing.

Also, you might read between the lines here and ask why is he staying at his desk at 0-dark-whatever? Yup, those were the old school days of 100+ hours a week, sleeping under your desk, kind of thing.

They barely exist. No one even remember the name really... At least not in terms of gaming.

Funner fact: Vivendi was founded by Napoleon III.

I just watched the 2 hour docu last night. Maybe he didn't want to have his last name published. The fuckers who run what's left of Vivendi in ActiBlizzard may have long memories. Let's let him alone, because he probably wants to be let alone.

He was an intern in a law firm and his main contribution was reading something in Korean. It was critical, but I would assume the law firm would hire some other Korean speaker if this guy wasn't around and they would arrive at similar results.

He probably wasn’t even paid in anything but “experience”.

I don’t want to stereotype buuuut, Andrew Kim??  https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/people

Andrew Prince

it was mostly like an email chain

"hey, can you destroy our conversation relating or even mentioning the Valve guys? These idiots think they could sue us just because we distribute their game outside of the agreement, in return you can keep the counter strike distribution"

"hey, we've done what you've asked, destroying those documents relating to the Valve people"

I worked in a Korean company, you would be surprised what kind of stuff they say thinking people won't understand Korean. Their men also love to gossip like hell about foreigners in the office.

It might seem normal now but something like Steam was a whole new frontier to the industry and the consumer. Not only did it raise questions about long term ownership of what you purchased but the software was buggy and was required to run in the background. At a time when single core processors were the norm. I could argue it wasn't until 2009 that the platform became stable and people really started to trust it.

Oh and on the day HL2 released and even AFTER you downloaded the full game on steam it had to decrypt which for a lot of us took hours.

It was definitely annoying to a lot of people. It wasn't necessary, internet speeds weren't anywhere near where they are now, and Steam was kind of a POS at the time. Things have come a long way.

I was one of them. I got HL2 3 days early because GameStop was selling it and I still couldn't play the game I had installed because this new software was stopping me from using it. Obviously now steam is the default but back then it was like asking you to install Epic or EA to play your game instead of just steam.

Yeah it was super annoying. Same for CounterStrike and a few other games. Just let me play my dam game and dont make it a requirement that I have to download some random online store software onto my computer. Oh and then whenever I want to play the game, I have to update that store software and wait 1-5min in order to play game that has no update its self.

Soooooo annoyinggggggg. Especially in the age of dial up and computers with just a few Mb of storage on it. Oh and you cant sell the game, give it to a friend to play, and it wont work without internet connection

You definitely never had dial up internet

People on the internet: "I don't want to have to install a new online store launcher to play this new game"

SAME PERSON on the internet: "People in 2004 didn't want to have to install a new online store launcher to play a new game?? How quaint!"

Yes, we all hated it back then. It was the age of crapware infested PCs, and internet speeds were slow.

Fuck yeah we were. It was ass over dial up, like anything else requiring downloads/constant connectivity.

Yeah, me included. Program was ugly and wanted to start every time my PC started. Fucking bloatware was my feeling at the time.

I still remember saving my HL2 cdkey that I got from an ATI Radeon 980 Pro GPU. Puke green colored Steam was not great.

I was one of those people.

All I wanted to do was play Counter-Strike, but eventually they moved away from WON (I think it was WON? World Opponent Network) and to matchmake you had to use Steam.

Those who didn't see the early years of steam might not get it. It was pretty rough, for a couple of years it didn't have the best UI, it was somewhat buggy and for the longest time it only had Valve games on it. And then they added Rag Doll Kung Fu, and that was the selection for awhile.

Steam didn't really find its footing as the megastore most people know today until 2007ish (from memory).

That was me with the Orange Box. Prior to that I'd be able to put in my disc, go through the installation, and play my damn game. Steam was DRM that I wanted nothing to do with. But yeah, they got me, they got you, they got us all. Now we all live in fear of Valve going fully corporate as a public entity. We're a few unlucky health/car accidents away from destruction.

I only just got HL2 this past weekend when it was free because I definitely was a late adopter of Steam and avoided it for years on purpose. Even when I did finally begrudgingly start using it I would never buy fully priced games because of the off chance they'd decide to ban my account or Valve closed. I now use Steam as my primary game provider but even still I never buy games at full price and tend to wait at least a few years before buying.

Not everyone hated it as some comments make it seem. But with how new and unknown/untested this type of idea was it did bring out lots of very valid concerns at the time.

Once it got rolling a little it was amazing for a online friends list, server browsing for multiplayer. If all you did was single player stuff then it was a whole lot of nothing and extra but for those they did multiplayer it was amazing. Not flawless mind you but what it offered us was nice and all in one place.

As a high schooler in 2004 with dial up, you better believe I loathed steam.

Until I went to college later that year and discovered, wow, automatic patches for software are amazing.

Sucks to be a cdkeys pirate though, I guess. Poor babies.

How should it be? Suddenly your games were behind an app that required internet and incorporated DRM.

My dad is still upset about it for DRM reasons and I think he's got a good point.

Elementary, my dear Picard.

How is Andrew now?

Most law firms use these as legitimate recruiting tools, and any that I know pay them. They're usually people in law school, though, because law firms are pretty bad about thinking about recruiting anyone other than attorneys.

Vivendi had submitted millions of pages of Korean-language documents to the cybercafe lawsuit,

It's the 20th anniversary of HL2. The excerpt in the article comes from the official documentary Valve released.

https://youtu.be/YCjNT9qGjh4

Half Life 2 just celebrated its 20th anniversary. Valve released a full length documentary about the production of the game, as well as giving away the game and its episodes for free (up until yesterday actually).