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Garry's Mod Goes Commercial
Gothic_Walrus writes "A recent entry in The Steam Review brings the news that Garry's Mod, the popular mod for Half-Life 2 that allows players freedom to play with the game's physics engine in what is effectively a sandbox mode, is going to be sold through Steam at a $10 price point. It's worth noting, however, that the current version of the mod will remain as a demo."
like selling CS for HL1 in stores when it was free online.
The CS box in stores came with a license for HL1 as well.
Just like CS for HL1, you don't have to buy Gary's mod either. There is still a free version available, and if the updates aren't worth it to you, don't buy it. The retail CS came with two things, a CD containing the executable (so you wouldn't have to d/l it) and a HL license. The price of the HL license made the purchase a reasonable one - though it might've been a more limited license, I don't remember. (Disclaimer, I didn't buy retail CS).
The thing with the popular HL mods from CS, Day of Defeat, Natrual Selection, They Hunger, etc... is that they were all really high quality stuff, on par with anything the professionals (including Valve) sold. If paying these people a reasonable fee keeps them motivated to keep producing such outstanding content, then great. And if people find those costs too high to bear, then they'll simply move on to other things.
I look at paying for Gary's mod a reward to Gary for providing an excellent tool, and hopefully some incentive for him (and his team) to keep going. Although I'd argue that Gary's team could've done better than a 50/50 split with Valve.
Technically, it's not the Source physics engine, it's the Havok physics engine.
"Price point" is a business speak for "cost".
... which, typically, is a percentage higher than "cost" ... but, when things typically fall within a range of "costs", they all get the same "price point".
... THAT is ridiculous. Make it an even $16.00 and i'll be happy, and oblivious to the ever increasing sales taxes my state like to impose upon us.
no, "cost" is business speak for "cost". "price point" is business speak for "sell price"
personally, i think "price points" should be strategically set so that local taxes and whatnot make the item an nice round number, instead of the "14.99 price point" which comes out to (here) $16.29
you can't have everything, where would you put it?
I'm a member of Garry's team, or the "Garry's Mod Illuminati", and there are a few things all of you should know.
For one, I read somewhere that 9.0.4 was not worth $10 because of the amount of bugs in it. That's precisely the point: this new version is a complete rework of the entire mod. Most of the bugs (text corruption, Lua's instability, etc.) are gone, and anything that pops up will be squashed along the way. Not to mention Garry will be releasing updates every week or so.
The mod team is not made up of robots. Most of us didn't know that we're going to get paid. As a matter of fact, I didn't know until I read that article. The point being that we're all working on this because it's a hobby. I've been following Garry's Mod since v2 and now it's more than thrilling to be able to contribute to it and have thousands of people play with what I've created. We do this because it's fun, and, like you, we don't like it when our contraption falls to pieces or when we can't read the menus because they've turned to gibberish. Garry spends a lot of time trying to decide what is best for the mod and the community, and he's worked hard on keeping it that way.
The new additions are not minor, and more things will be added along the way. One of the most awesome features is the reimplementation of Lua. Lots of people complain that this takes away from the building aspect of the game, and that's not entirely true. The new toolmodes and post processing effects have been coded using Lua, providing us (and you) with the ability to create any toolmode or PP effect we want. Garry is also focusing on creating build and physics game modes, to emphasize the true roots of the mod.
$10 is not a lot of money, and it's well worth it considering that without it there wouldn't even be any more updates. Garry hasn't sold out, he just found some more motivation. Besides, if you don't want to spend the money, keep playing 9.0.4, no one is stopping you.