The creator of Portal 64 said that frustrated fans shouldn’t blame Valve for the recent takedown.
Portal 64 sought to revive Valve’s classic 2007 game on the Nintendo 64 consoles. It was shut down just a week after its developer, Joe Lambert, released a “First Slide” video showing progress after two years of work, and promoted a Patreon that he hoped would Supports project creation as a full-time job.
Portal 64 was pulled At the same time, Team Fortress: Source 2, a fan project seeking to port Valve’s classic shooter to the Source 2 engine, was following a DMCA takedown request from Valve that led to a ban on GitHub repositories of the group.
Lambert posted a new video explaining what happened, revealing that Valve asked him to halt the project after it was found to be using the official Nintendo 64 SDK.
“I can’t say I didn’t expect this at some point, because it’s their IP on a Nintendo console,” he said. “I was hoping I’d be able to complete it, but that’s not unexpected. When Valve realized that Portal 64 was based on Nintendo’s own library, called Libultra, they had to tell me to stop.”
“It makes sense for Valve to ask me to stop the project after discovering they were using Libultra,” Lambert continued. “Because while I may not be a big enough target for Nintendo to go after, Valve is. So, if they put their stamp of approval on the project, that might be a reason for Nintendo to go after them. So, they didn’t want to touch that. And so I don’t blame them “Not at all, and I don’t think you should either. Don’t get mad at Valve here. The project was probably doomed from the beginning.”
That’s the case for Gate 64. So what’s next for Lambert? He said he was somewhat relieved by the closure, given that the project probably had another two years of work before it was completed. Now he’s starting to think about new projects, including creating an original game for the Nintendo 64 and PC.
Image credit: James Lambert/YouTube
Wesley is IGN’s UK news editor. You can find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can contact Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.