The developer of the cancelled Portal 64 demake has said the project was “probably doomed from the beginning.”
James Lambert has spent the past couple of years working on a version of Valve’s first-person shooter Portal that could run on the Nintendo 64.
Earlier this year, Lambert released a demo of Portal 64 that featured 13 of the 19 chambers found in the original game, but shortly after First Slice was shared, Lambert was asked by Valve to take it down.
“I have been in communication with Valve about the future of the project,” he wrote on his Patreon. “Because the project depends on Nintendo‘s proprietary libraries, they have asked me to take the project down.”
In a statement shared with PC Gamer, Lambert speculated about the reason for the takedown notice. “I think Valve didn’t want to be tied up in a project involving Nintendo IP [and] I don’t blame them,” he wrote. If I could somehow have a discussion with Nintendo about the possibility [of continuing to work on Portal 64] I would love that. I don’t know what it would take to convince them,” he added.
Now, in a new video, Lambert has said the project was “probably doomed to be taken down from the beginning.”
“I can’t say I didn’t expect this at some point because it’s their IP on a Nintendo console. I was hopeful I could get it to completion, but this is not unexpected,” he explained.
He went on to say the issue arose because Portal 64 was reliant on Nintendo’s own proprietary library. “It makes sense Valve would have to tell me to stop after finding that out. While I’m not a big enough target for Nintendo to come after, Valve is. So, they didn’t want to touch that.”
“Don’t be mad at Valve here,” he continued. I don’t blame them at all and I don’t think you should either.”
Lambert went on to say Portal 64 could live on using an open-source library “but I’m not keeping my hopes up. “I don’t think Valve wants to worry about fighting legal battles,” he added. “I think the only way this project comes back is if Nintendo approves the project.”
In other news, Bethesda has promised the “biggest” update to Starfield is due for release in the coming weeks.