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

Smart

[Limekiller42]

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).

Source 3

[BenJeremy]

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.

Re:FREE free or "free with strings attached"?

[VGPowerlord]

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.

Re:Pales to UE4

[VGPowerlord]

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.