Valve may be set to finally hand over Half-Life 2 to publisher Vivendi, but behind the scenes, the two companies have been involved in a long, drawn out legal battle. Roughly two years ago Valve filed a lawsuit against Sierra On-Line (now Sierra Entertainment of Vivendi Universal Games) for alleged copyright infringement. Basically, Valve believes the publisher distributed its games to cyber cafes without their consent. Of course Sierra fought back with its own counterclaim, and well, we won't bore you with the legal jargon any more… (check out the article if you really want all the details). Interestingly enough, Sierra/VUG still wishes to work with Valve in the future and has gone as far as to ask the court to force Valve to work with them. Then again Vivendi is smart enough to realize that Half-Life 2 will likely sell millions.
