Imo, Trademark. Black Mesa is a concept from Half-Life, but “Black Mesa” to the best of my knowledge wasn’t a registered trademark. “Team Fortress/Team Fortress 2” are registered trademarks however, and that significantly changes the value and functionality of the specific terms.
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Stovetop@lemmy.world 8 months agoMakes me wonder where thir line is between this and Black Mesa, though.
Vespair@lemm.ee 8 months ago
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That would only allow them the name, not the content. They always had to get Valve’s permission.
Vespair@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Yes, but it’s easier to give permission to use concepts that don’t infringe on trademark than it is to give permission on something that could be argued in court as muddying a trademark.
I know they require permission either way, but what permission they’re actually asking for changes based on what terminology they use
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Well my point is that since the content is directly related, it actually doesn’t matter what they called it. It would’ve been exactly the same amount of infringement if they called it, “happy fun times at the science lab”.
yamanii@lemmy.world 8 months ago
But we just got Portal Revolution some days ago, on steam.
Mountaineer@aussie.zone 8 months ago
I’d guess the fine line is “Valve intend to earn money from something official in the future”
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Black Mesa is a remake of a single player game that Valve wasn’t planning on remaking any time soon, more profitable to make it official and take a cut
TF2 actively still makes them sht tons of money, no profit in splitting the fan base