Trying to get in contact with Valve about a legal question

[gaming]

I am trying to get in contact with one or more Valve employees about a question about whether or not I am allowed to integrate the SteamCMD tool into my own program, and if so, whether I can distribute SteamCMD alongside my program or make a downloader that downloads SteamCMD. I did email a few Valve employees along with an email to [e-mail], but with no answer so far :(

What's the best way to get in touch with Valve?

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Contact Steam support, and wait for reply, that's about it, can't speed them up to reply to you.

[gaming]

But what do I choose in the list? If I choose support for a game, nothing that comes up is relevant to my problem, and they ask for system info...

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Support help page > My account > Data related to my account > Scroll to the bottom, click on contact support.

[gaming]

Why "Data" related to my account?

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Why not look around and see for yourself.

[gaming]

I haven't found anything that fits my problem well. But I guess I'll just do what you said and mention that I didn't find a better place to post it...

[Start_Running]

Sometyhing tells me they are gioing to say "no".

[Gilga ™ |Yonaguni|]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Sometyhing tells me they are gioing to say "no".

Most likely.

[ShelLuser]

Originally posted by Crazy..:

I am trying to get in contact with one or more Valve employees about a question about whether or not I am allowed to integrate the SteamCMD tool into my own program

Read the license agreement?

I quote:

Two different licenses govern Your use of materials on the Sites.

a. With respect to Posted Material contributed by users of a Developer Site, the contributing user (and/or Valve, to the extent Valve has such rights to license or sublicense) grants You a worldwide, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, fully paid up license, in connection with the Source engine and Source SDK (and games, mods and other products based thereon), to: (1) make, use, copy, modify, create derivative works of such Posted Material, (2) publicly perform or display, import, broadcast, transmit, distribute, license, offer to sell, and sell, rent, lease or lend copies (and derivative works thereof) of the Posted Material, and (3) sublicense to third parties the foregoing rights, including the right to sublicense to further third parties.

b. With respect to other parts of a Developer Site (such as these terms of use and the fixed sections of the main page) and with respect to all material on a Game Site, Valve and/or the contributing user grants You a nonexclusive, nontransferable license, for the duration of Your session of using the Site, to download such materials to one (1) computer, solely for your personal use.

Seems pretty self-explaining to me. Also note how no distribution archive (not even the Git repository!) contains any license agreement, therefor it's obvious that the general license agreement covers all this. Well, see above...

[gaming]

Originally posted by ShelLuser:

Originally posted by Crazy..:

I am trying to get in contact with one or more Valve employees about a question about whether or not I am allowed to integrate the SteamCMD tool into my own program

Read the license agreement?

I quote:

Two different licenses govern Your use of materials on the Sites.

a. With respect to Posted Material contributed by users of a Developer Site, the contributing user (and/or Valve, to the extent Valve has such rights to license or sublicense) grants You a worldwide, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, fully paid up license, in connection with the Source engine and Source SDK (and games, mods and other products based thereon), to: (1) make, use, copy, modify, create derivative works of such Posted Material, (2) publicly perform or display, import, broadcast, transmit, distribute, license, offer to sell, and sell, rent, lease or lend copies (and derivative works thereof) of the Posted Material, and (3) sublicense to third parties the foregoing rights, including the right to sublicense to further third parties.

b. With respect to other parts of a Developer Site (such as these terms of use and the fixed sections of the main page) and with respect to all material on a Game Site, Valve and/or the contributing user grants You a nonexclusive, nontransferable license, for the duration of Your session of using the Site, to download such materials to one (1) computer, solely for your personal use.

Seems pretty self-explaining to me. Also note how no distribution archive (not even the Git repository!) contains any license agreement, therefor it's obvious that the general license agreement covers all this. Well, see above...

So I guess this means I can NOT make a downloader or distribute the SteamCMD executable. My last bet is asking users to download SteamCMD manually, this is of course assuming I can have my program "integrate" SteamCMD (I run SteamCMD as a process and read the output).

[MalikQayum]

Originally posted by Crazy..:

I am trying to get in contact with one or more Valve employees about a question about whether or not I am allowed to integrate the SteamCMD tool into my own program, and if so, whether I can distribute SteamCMD alongside my program or make a downloader that downloads SteamCMD. I did email a few Valve employees along with an email to [e-mail], but with no answer so far :(

What's the best way to get in touch with Valve?

It should be perfectly fine, I am not really sure what these guys are talking about but i think they might confuse the steamworks sdk with the actual separate steamCMD.. (which is public)
but if you feel unsure about it one could always just have the client app download it itself and install it from the direct link https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/client/installer/steamcmd.zip
this way you don't actually distribute the files yourself.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD

[gaming]

Originally posted by MalikQayum:

Originally posted by Crazy..:

I am trying to get in contact with one or more Valve employees about a question about whether or not I am allowed to integrate the SteamCMD tool into my own program, and if so, whether I can distribute SteamCMD alongside my program or make a downloader that downloads SteamCMD. I did email a few Valve employees along with an email to [e-mail], but with no answer so far :(

What's the best way to get in touch with Valve?

It should be perfectly fine, I am not really sure what these guys are talking about but i think they might confuse the steamworks sdk with the actual separate steamCMD.. (which is public)
but if you feel unsure about it one could always just have the client app download it itself and install it from the direct link https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/client/installer/steamcmd.zip
this way you don't actually distribute the files yourself.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD

I heard some juristictions count downloaders as distribution, so I am not sure I can do that.

[MalikQayum]

your assumption is that it is not allowed to distribute it in the first place but that is a wrong assumption it is allowed, i just mentioned the other method in case that would have made you feel more comfortable.
(slettede også lige min kommentar på din profile, da jeg fortrækker ikke at efterlade kommentare på andre folks profiler.)