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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

#91

Awesome. After long time something interesting from valve

Ouch. Steam box stuff and VR not that interesting? Though I'd really love for them to FINALLY announce a Half Life sequel.

New game announcements typically don't come at GDC. PAX is around the corner though.

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

#92

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?

Absolutely. In the 2000s the Unreal Engine had a price tag of half a million dollars up-front plus royalties (I don't remember the percentage) on the back end. That these companies are giving their engines—even their source code—away essentially for free indicates either that (1) engine sales was never a very lucrative line of business or that (2) the promise of establishing your technology as a defacto game engine standard—the Panavision of games—is even more appealing than immediate revenue.

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

#93
post #35

Check out Project Reality for a great example of a very engaging game that will benefit from game engine licensing like this. Current version is BF2 based and some of the best squad based gameplay I have experienced.

Very interesting that I find this here! I was on the PR2 team for awhile before things stagnated. I don't think the team at this point over at realitymod.com would benefit from anything happening at EA in regards to BF2's license. A lot has changed and things are moving very slowly nowadays.

You might want to check out Squad (joinsquad.com)

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

#94
post #40
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sold the company, and now Carmack at Oculus. It makes sense that the values of the company have changed.

Too bad how Carmack was unable to shape the culture in the company he co-created in the first place. Seems like he remained always an outsider.

Masters of Doom makes Carmack sound as responsible for ID's culture problems as anyone else. (Mind you, I'm not sure how reliable that impression is: in some places the author gives the impression that he'd pencilled in Carmack as the designated baddie of the story.)

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

#95

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?

Especially when game devs are giving 30% of the sales (starting from the first $1 they make) to the marketplace where they sell their games...

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

#96

I'm interested in knowing if Source 2 will only be targeting PC and Steam Machines, or if Valve has plans for Xbox/PlayStation/Wii and iOS/Android/Windows Phone.

hopefully mac also, I think all of valve first party titles run on mac so I would hope they wouldn't drop it for source 2(and mythical HL3)

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

#97
post #70
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carmack didn't "sell out", he spent decades at id and was responsible for vast swathes of 3D technology and the open-sourcing of multiple cutting edge game engines. He went above and beyond what you could expect of anyone who cofounds a game development house and he is treated like a literal programming icon for good reason.

"On June 24, 2009, ZeniMax Media acquired the company." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software => sell out

The selling of the company that you don't outright 100% own doesn't equate to the traditional meaning of "selling out".

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

#98
post #94
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad how Carmack was unable to shape the culture in the company he co-created in the first place. Seems like he remained always an outsider.

Masters of Doom makes Carmack sound as responsible for ID's culture problems as anyone else. (Mind you, I'm not sure how reliable that impression is: in some places the author gives the impression that he'd pencilled in Carmack as the designated baddie of the story.)

I've read the book as well. I'm not sure what to make of it in terms of why id went the way it did. Anyway, Carmack remained, and after Romero left I believe he had a leading role in id. Yet he seemed to remain isolated in his principle of opening up his code now and then. Since Carmack has left id has been a fully closed house of software. Pretty sad. At the same time, I dont care since they did not make any notable game recently anyway.

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

#99

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?

Absolutely. In the 2000s the Unreal Engine had a price tag of half a million dollars up-front plus royalties (I don't remember the percentage) on the back end. That these companies are giving their engines—even their source code—away essentially for free indicates either that (1) engine sales was never a very lucrative line of business or that (2) the promise of establishing your technology as a defacto game engine s…

Engine sales used to be lucrative, quite a few companies have been based solely on that business model for years. But just like most things, the market changed over the years. High quality alternatives started to appear, big publishers started making or buying their own tech, and easier entry to market are among some of the reasons.

In my mind, the biggest contributor is simply competition.

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

#100
post #13

Based on the context of the "free for content developers," it sounds to me like they mean it will be free for people developing add-on content for existing games, not that it will be free for people making their own games.

I agree. If it was free for game development, they would have said "game developers" and not "content developers."

Someone in /r/gamedev posted a link to this press release. [0] It looks official, and steamdb is usually reputable. Here's the most relevant section, it definitely doesn't sound like Source 2 will be free for original game development.

> "The value of a platform like the PC is how much it increases the productivity of those who use the platform. With Source 2, our focus is increasing creator productivity. 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," said Valve's Jay Stelly. "We will be making Source 2 available for free to content developers. This combined with recent announcements by Epic and Unity will help continue the PCs dominance as the premiere content authoring platform."

[0] https://steamdb.info/blog/source2-announcement/

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