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.

Comments

Well, not 'free'.

[Junta]

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.