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Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

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Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#81

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

jsheard wrote: post #69
ygra wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was Source even licensed as extensively as Unreal or idTech? I got the impression that most Source games were Valve's own and licensing the engine wasn't really a priority (or source of revenue) for them.

Not even close, most of the licenced Source games were existing HL2 mod projects being moved to a commercial standalone format. The only high profile original game ever developed on it outside of Valve was TitanFall, and they had to rewrite a good chunk of the engine to bring it up to modern standards.

I thought they rewrote stuff because they were using it as a prototyping tool, and its design didn't quite fit their game?

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#82

Post by leoc »

kmfrk wrote: post #51
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a (possibly crazy) theory: Companies like Valve and Epic have already amortized the cost of development of their engines - those are codebases that span 16 years, and both companies had multiple commercial successes. All it took was Unity to give a little nudge. Now, IMO, the reason for giving so much for free is to keep a player out (Unity) and milk the cow one last time with the eventual royalties. I think i…

There's probably a bit of the Photoshop Effect going on, where companies are mostly interested in having their tool become the dominant one - and the dominant skill - in the industry over piracy litigation. We're in a perfect storm of access to development tools and interest in indie development thanks in large part to Steam and Kickstarter. In the case of Valve, I think what butters their bread isn't Steam anyway, b…

Asset-store revenues are a big part of that as well.

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#83

Post by mangeletti »

The thing that boggles my mind is how there seems to be concern about this concept of charging 5% (like Unreal 4 does).

In my mind (not a game developer - tell me if I'm way off here), the framework gives you about 90% of the work up front (10s of thousands of man hours). Then, once you finish your game and it's a success (sales-wise), you pay only 5% of your revenue. This seems like a wonderful deal, right?

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#84

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

mangeletti wrote: post #83

The thing that boggles my mind is how there seems to be concern about this concept of charging 5% (like Unreal 4 does). In my mind (not a game developer - tell me if I'm way off here), the framework gives you about 90% of the work up front (10s of thousands of man hours). Then, once you finish your game and it's a success (sales-wise), you pay only 5% of your revenue. This seems like a wonderful deal, right?

The article just noted that as a fact, and it is.

Unless you're an established studio I'd just pick whichever engine/environment you find most appealing and worry about the money when you actually make any.

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#86

Post by SoMuchToGrok »

mangeletti wrote: post #83

The thing that boggles my mind is how there seems to be concern about this concept of charging 5% (like Unreal 4 does). In my mind (not a game developer - tell me if I'm way off here), the framework gives you about 90% of the work up front (10s of thousands of man hours). Then, once you finish your game and it's a success (sales-wise), you pay only 5% of your revenue. This seems like a wonderful deal, right?

I agree that 5% to the engine developer is a wonderful deal - however, having a working game engine in no way means 90% of the work is done. That's when the really difficult work begins.

Video games need to trigger an emotional response in order to be successful. From visual design, to audio design, game rules/logic, controls, testing, marketing...this list goes on. It's far more than raw tech resources; psychology is a huge factor in game development.

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#87

Post by thrillgore »

unethical_ban wrote: post #19

Odd that idTech, known historically as a corss platform engine that was unique for being opened after its profit was done, is now seemingly one of the more closed engines on the market.

Bethesda once claimed that third parties distributing through them would have access to Id Tech, but now it appears they're now fully vertical, and no longer publishing outside of their own studios.

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#89

Post by Robadob »

lentil_soup wrote: post #61
mutagen wrote: post #39

The article attributes all these free engines to Unity but I think they've missed 20+ years of videogame history. First, Valve has always been very open to game mods. Some of their most popular franchises (TF & CS) grew out of the mod community around HL1 and they've always made tooling available for the Source engine. HL1 was based on the Quake engine and id has always embraced the mod community. Id software has als…

The CryENGINE also had the FreeSDK until very recently. http://www.cryengine.com/community/downloads.php?view=detail...

The CryEngine version sold on steam is £7/$10 per month (slightly less if you buy a longer subscription), and apparently has no additional royalties if you commercialise your project. That seems very reasonable from the outside for any seriously interested parties, potentially just reduces support queries from casual users.

The free SDK apparently had a 20% royalties clause at the point of commercialisation, so this deal sounds much better.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/220980/ http://www.cryengine.com/get-cryengine/eaas-faq

Re: Valve Announces Source 2, and It’ll Be Free

#90

Post by jxm »

mangeletti wrote: post #83

The thing that boggles my mind is how there seems to be concern about this concept of charging 5% (like Unreal 4 does). In my mind (not a game developer - tell me if I'm way off here), the framework gives you about 90% of the work up front (10s of thousands of man hours). Then, once you finish your game and it's a success (sales-wise), you pay only 5% of your revenue. This seems like a wonderful deal, right?

Very inclined to agree. Especially with such a small percentage charge, it seems pretty fair to pay for the work that goes into the framework that makes the game even possible.
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