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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.
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).
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.
Well I believe KSP is using unity and it has a pretty big map:
www.kerbalspaceprogram.com
If you can simulate a solar system, that meets the requirements of big in my book :)
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
1) Nobody can really say what Steam's royalty rates are. They almost certainly vary dependent on the risk of the game itself (low cost probably = high royalty and vice versa). However, Tripwire have said this:
http://www.destructoid.com/tri...
"Let me just say that our royalty deal was great, and is in line with what I understand that other digital distribution services are offering"
So, no, 30-40% isn't some set figure, it's some rumour on the Internet dredged up by someone who's in breach of their NDA in doing so anyway and I don't think any serious game studio would risk that.
2) So what? If you want to use Source, you'll pay. If it's not good value, nobody would use Source (or, by extension, Steam). It's really that simple. If that's the market rate, that's the market rate for PC digital distribution of something using their own engine, and yet console developers and all kinds are using it, then that's what it costs and it's worth that to you, or not.
There aren't a dearth of games using Source and neither are there an overwhelmingly majority. So it's probably about right in terms of value even if it DOES cost more (which isn't a given at all).
Given that source has been around since 2004, and EA etc. are happy publishing Source Games (don't EA own Origin?), I hardly think there's a big problem there.
I'm going to toss a big [Citation needed] and at the same time point out that Source 1 doesn't have this requirement for its free version.
As an example, the original mod version of The Stanley Parable was distributed through ModDB.
Then again, Source 1's free version has licensing terms that prevent you from selling anything you produce with it at all.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
UE4 is the better engine
Really? Can you provide comparisons?
Actually, I'll answer that for you:
No, you can't, because Source 2 isn't out yet.
If you're comparing UE4 with Source 1, I'd like to point out that while Source has been updated over the years, its core technology is still a decade behind UE4's.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
It's free, but you are only allowed to distribute through Steam (meaning Valve gets 30-40% of your revenue).
No, you must also distribute through Steam, not only. Big difference.
I am confused. No Yipppppeeeeee.
If you can simulate a solar system, that meets the requirements of big in my book :)
Not necessarily. How much is going on in those solar-systems? If it's just modelling a few spheres, that doesn't count.
Yes it is. It doesn't do any of the content delivery, since there's nothing there you can play on Android anyway, but I can log in, perform account management, buy stuff, tell steam to install something to my desktop if it's on, use the friends list.
citation provided. I believe that this is the requirement GP was referring to:
That says that if you sell your Source 1 game on Steam you must either pay for a full Source Engine licence or you can't sell it anywhere other than Steam. (There's no mention on whether you can sell it outside Steam if it's not on Steam at all though)
As for The Stanley Parable HL2 mod, that's not a counterexample because that was a free mod - it wasn't being sold from Steam or from elsewhere. What you see there on ModDB are free downloads.
Pretty certain i agree. Maybe i'm transitioning to a "get of my lawn" phase, but i find myself frustrated with the recent flood of marketing for mobile titles.
I've played and enjoyed Ridiculous Fishing and Radiant Defense, and have no beef with a cool game for my mobile, but whats the story with Bomb Beach, Clash of Clans, and Kate Upton Castle Simulator? The stuff i see pimped on TV daily. Are these games any good? I get the impression they're marketed to a younger crowd, and have micro-transaction hooks.
I guess damn near everyone has a device capable of playing these titles.
You mean Half-life 2 deathmatch (which nobody played and Valve practically abandoned day 1)? No, we're talking about Half-life the single player experience. If Valve refuses to do a single player release then they should license the IP to a trusted dev do do it for them.
As for supported valve games, you have:
- DOTA 2 ~ 1.1m people playing it right now
- Counter-strike:Global Offensive ~ 300k people playing it right now
- TF2 ~68k
- Garry's Mod ~42k
- Counter-strike:Source ~11k
So yeah, they have a lot of games that people still play regularly.
http://store.steampowered.com/...
Bye!
Kerbal Space Program actually has a very small map. It only renders terrain and physics objects within 2000 meters of the ship you're flying, everything else is skybox. If you ever build a reasonably large space station you'll get huge fps drop. Don't get me wrong I love KSP to death, but your statement is not accurate.
There is no memory shortage. yes I have heard of XFCE. Go away.
Althouh $100 is not much
To put it in perspective: This one-time $100 fee is less than the annually recurring fees of registering a domain, leasing a VPS for web hosting, buying an organization-validated TLS certificate, buying an organization-validated Authenticode certificate, and buying an Apple developer ID if you want to target OS X. And it's probably far less than what your studio pays its accountant every year, let alone programmers and artists.