What was the process to get Subspace on Steam?

[KrynetiX]

The real "legal" green light was in the EULA of Continuum itself, stating that it can freely be distributed on any game platform as long as the client is not modified.

[KrynetiX]

From what I’ve heard, the process was pretty close to releasing a small indie game.
Main hurdles were just confirming the rights and making sure everything was clean for Valve. Costs were minimal aside from the standard Steam fee, and there was no heavy legal work. The biggest challenge was sorting out ownership. After that, the submission went reasonably smoothly.
If you’re looking for something simple and fun to take your mind off things for a moment, you might enjoy this — it’s easy to use and quite entertaining plinko-win.com

It was very hard lol .. I had to put my real legal name as "owner" but thank god it wasn't visible for long. Steam's team was very generous to us. We basically declared abandonware and had such a massive amount of player support - they let us through.
Greenlight involved a lot of overthinking, over-worrying about legalities, giving Priit some time to respond (he didn't) before going ahead with it.

In the end, despite the consensus largely "never gonna happen". It happened.

Nobody thought it would revive the game, but it did bring in a LOT of new players. We setup a new player system that notified staff. Every new player was greeted by a staff member and helped in any way possible.

It still helps for the random new player who finds it on steam, but a new initiative is needed.

P.S. who broke pub map? Tileset updated without a new .lvz overlay? Now there's weird blank/grey tiles where the .lvz overlay used to be. Qan and I spent a lot of time on that. I'll send a new .lvz overlay to match the new tileset if someone will actually upload it.

[Anastasia5678]

From what I’ve heard, the process was pretty close to releasing a small indie game.
Main hurdles were just confirming the rights and making sure everything was clean for Valve. Costs were minimal aside from the standard Steam fee, and there was no heavy legal work. The biggest challenge was sorting out ownership. After that, the submission went reasonably smoothly.
If you’re looking for something simple and fun to take your mind off things for a moment, you might enjoy this — it’s easy to use and quite entertaining plinko-win.com

[damageinc86]

The reason we were able to get on Steam is due to Continuum being in some ways a remake of Subspace. It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the basic gist.

The main roadblock was in demonstrating and claiming ownership. If you're looking at abandonware I don't think you're going to be able to make a good claim to ownership, unfortunately.

This is the part that piqued my curiosity. How could TW/other zones prove a claim of ownership to this game when there isn't even an owner anymore? Or is it that Steam/Valve doesn't have a clue that continuum isn't the actual game subspace that was owned by VIE ? Thus, someone could actually get a hold of Priit and get the "ownership" verified?

[Boldsen]

I dunno, Gaben looks like the guy who can be bribed with a few chocolate bars. He seems that greedy. Kidding aside, at least they still respect ownership...

[fencepost]

The reason we were able to get on Steam is due to Continuum being in some ways a remake of Subspace. It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the basic gist.

This is very interesting! Can you tell me more?

The main roadblock was in demonstrating and claiming ownership. If you're looking at abandonware I don't think you're going to be able to make a good claim to ownership, unfortunately.

Overall the process took quite a long time due to the question of ownership.

tl;dr: I don't think you're going to be able to get this game on Steam. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news

This sounds familiar - We haven't definitively identified the owner due to some conflicting patent/trademark documents online and general zeitgeist.

One theory is that Take 2 owns it but isn't aware they own it due to employee turn over, potential low value etc. We should probably talk to them to find out. Some people even claim to have talked to them, yada yada.

no butts hurt over here! you're most likely right, but I still want to poke around and see what it would take for it to happen

<< STEAM RELAUNCH >>

HI FENCEPOST

hola Leland

[Leland]

<< STEAM RELAUNCH >>


HI FENCEPOST

[qan]

The reason we were able to get on Steam is due to Continuum being in some ways a remake of Subspace. It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the basic gist.

It didn't cost anything at the time, but it now costs $100. They used to have curation standards. Now, for a flat fee of $100, Gaben will let you sell a bug-laden, stock-asset 5 minute demo hacked together in GameMaker over the weekend. (Valve takes a 30% cut of sales, so if you sold this shovelware for $1, you'd need to sell 143 copies to make back that money.)

I think lawyers may have been consulted at some point, though can't remember. I wasn't involved in the process. (Currently I'm maintaining the Steam distro, though.)

The main roadblock was in demonstrating and claiming ownership. If you're looking at abandonware I don't think you're going to be able to make a good claim to ownership, unfortunately.

Overall the process took quite a long time due to the question of ownership.

tl;dr: I don't think you're going to be able to get this game on Steam. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

[fencepost]

Hello Subspace forum!

I remember playing this game in elementary school with my brother, and being floored by it. It's awesome to see this community resurrect this game and keep it going after all these years!

I have some questions around how Subspace was able to make it to steam, and what that process was like for those involved in making it happen. I also belong to a community for a game in a similar boat, Myth II: Soulblighter. We've long talked about how to get Myth on steam, but haven't really made much progress due to the murky legality of this likely abandoned game.

- What was the process to get Subspace on steam? Was it similar to getting an indie game on steam?
- How much $ did it cost?
- Were lawyer(s) involved?
- What roadblocks did you encounter?
- How long did it take?

Would love to have a quick conversation with the responsible parties if possible.

Thanks