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We may have stumbled across a Kickstarter more ridiculous than the potato salad campaign. Christopher James Butler, claimed to be a developer who has worked for both EA and Valve in the last ten years. He wanted a mere £1500 to develop Half Life 3 under a different name, without Valve's permission.
The campaign page says that Butler has a small team who have saved up funds to keep themselves paid throughout the development cycle. In an update on the page, the campaign starter admitted that he had not approached Valve about this at all and planned to release the final game under a different name to avoid getting sued. He also aimed to have a playable Alpha build ready for backers to play in 10 months time.
Once word got out, the Kickstarter campaign was canceled. It only takes a bit of common sense to realize that a triple A shooter will take a lot more than £1500 to make, not to mention the legal ramifications the campaign would face for using the Half-Life trademark fraudulently.
Valve might be taking its time with Half-Life 3 but even if a community driven, spiritual successor to Half Life 2 was released, it probably wouldn't compare to what Valve could come up with itself. Then again, community driven projects have been very successful in the past so who knows…
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KitGuru Says: This campaign might have been stupid but it does raise the question, would you guys play a community made sequel to Half-Life 2? Do you think that modders could come up with something that would match what Valve could do quality-wise?
If it were a community created HL2 modded campaign for example then sure it’s always fun to see how people would portray the next installment to the series but Valve know what they’re doing and to claim that a community created campaign for $1500 would be the “unofficial official” HL3 then that’s kind of insulting in some respects. Valve, like any other developer, have the story mapped out from day 1. The core elements to what they want HL3 to be have been on the drawing boards since HL2, or maybe even HL1 and with the upcoming releases of the steam machines and source 2 it should be pretty much around the corner anyway
Looks like he cancelled it. I seriously doubt he ever worked for a games company, certainly not as a developer. And he’s showed naivity on so many levels, for one, simply changing the name is not enough to avoid legal issues over intellectual property if he’d planned on using characters, elements, themes from the HL universe. Valve are big supporters of the modding community but that doesn’t stretch to making new games for public consumption commercially. 10 month development time? Well for his team size (and we don’t know skill level) it would end up being truly terrible even for a demonstrable alpha version. And I’m not totally clear what the £1500 is for, just motivation? I’d either be doing it for nothing or if there was money involved £1500 is laughable and more of a demotivator if anything.
The community created Portal: First Slice, right? That was incredible, I am confident if a community made a sequel it would be amazing
hmm maybe just a joke to begin with.