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Source 2 Will Also Be Free
jones_supa writes Valve is officially debuting its Source 2 engine at GDC this week alongside a host of other new technologies, and it's expected to launch at a competitive price: free. The news of its release coincides with Epic making Unreal Engine 4 free-to-download and Unity announcing a full-featured free version of Unity 5. Valve is making a show of marketing Source 2 not just to developers, but game creators of all stripes — including Steam Workshop creators. "With Source 2, our focus is on increasing creator productivity," stated Valve engineer Jay Stelly in a press release confirming the launch. "Given how important user generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not for just the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favorite games." It's worth noting that Valve also plans to release a version of Source 2 that's compatible with Vulkan, the open-standard graphics API that's considered heir apparent to OpenGL.
UE4 is the better engine, and they beat them to the punch. Get back to working on HL3 now please :)
Valve is smart in that they are in the business of content creation (it's own inventory of Valve games) as well as content delivery (Steam). They've made the decision to give up some revenue on the engine sales side to almost certainly gain more future income on the content delivery side. It also seems wise from the standpoint of just having more cool games out there which expands the market for gaming in general and that certainly benefits Valve's Steam product. It's like when Elon Musk offered his patents up for use by others. It's a nice thing to do, but it was also smart from a business standpoint to grow the electronic car market from a niche market to something more broad based (and profitable to be in).
Unreal Engine 4 is "free" but has some strings attached if you make over x$ in profit, requires x% of your profits every months, possible audits, etc.
Is Source 2 better in that regard?
And what about all three on the technical side? Can all three make native code for Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, Android, Wii U, Xbox One, PS4, Intellivision, etc?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
...free is not enough.
I expect that Source 3 will be able to develop games for mobile, like UE4 and Unity.
Of course, being third in a Valve series, we all know how this story ends.
As someone not familiar with most of these engines, but aware of (at least older) versions of Unreal, How effective are any of these engines at larger maps of the kind we see in GTA, Saints Row, or the various iterations of TES?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
There is certainly a segment of the population that really enjoys games like Witcher, Skyrim, and etc - game modding is a big thing now. Having understood engines and toolkits makes that a lot easier, obviously - and yeah, put something in the license that mods can be adopted and merged by the game publisher, so long as some credit is given? Or heck, DOTA was just a mod for Warcraft 3, if I recall correctly...now it's a game on it's own. Sometimes mods just get that popular, I guess. I do wish that somehow, the various studios could create a few standards on things upon which they all agree, and get it to where games could be more about the content, and less about re-inventing a wheel. It's not like the movie industry has to re-invent cameras and video editing every time they make a movie, after all.
Source 2 is 'free'..... so long as you ONLY make your content available through Steam. For a lot of developers, this is just accepted, but some games aren't on Steam.
So let's say you use UE4 and don't sell through steam. They get 5% royalties. Or Unity, where you pay a flat fee for the game engine.
If you use Source 2 for 'free', the only way to sell it is through Steam, which gets *30-40%* royalties. Source 2 isn't free, it's a hook to try to get more lock-in to keep Steam as the premiere distribution platform.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Oddly enough, not even Xbox or Playstation is mentioned.
Only a few hand-picked developers are allowed to buy devkits for Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo platforms in the first place. They demonstrate this ability by producing and selling a few PC games first to establish "relevant video game industry experience" (source: WarioWorld.com) and through other means. If your organization has the money to become a licensed developer of console games, then it is more likely to have the money for a traditional engine license.
You got Steam on Linux finally.
Don't care about Steam Machine
Don't care about Valve VR goggles
Don't care about Source 2 engine unless you give us HL-3
So Gabe, Please get off your lazy donut/crispy cream eating fat ass and do something about it.
I am confused. No Yipppppeeeeee.
I.e. invest in free game engine technology, release it and let the professional community build the games sold on Steam for you.
We just essentially completely shifted gaming era from Games and Brands to Technology and Content distribution as the deciding factor for success.
Valve might get me to come back and develop with their engine if I can use it without having to be connected to Steam.
Just the license. Would love to see it under a FOSS license.