[quote]Valve’s sudden entry into the engine race, with an official announcement of Source 2, seems to have put them right up front alongside frenzied rivals Unity and Unreal. (Poor old Crytek, eh?) Meeting with studio founder Erik Johnson today, I learned that when they say Source 2 is “free”, they mean it. Unlike Unity’s (much lowered) subscription rates (for larger teams), and Epic’s revenue cut of successful projects, Valve won’t be asking for any money at all. Well, sort of… They just require that the game be launched on Steam, along with anywhere else you might want to sell it.[/quote]
[url]http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/03/04/source-2-is-actually-free-like-for-free/[/url]
Well this is great for video game developers, since valve is trying its best to make Source 2 completely moddable
Steam takes a percentage of the sales :^)
[QUOTE=ZombieDawgs;47259118]Steam takes a percentage of the sales :)[/QUOTE]
Yes, but for everyone, not just you because you use source2, any game you make is probably going to be on steam already, and just being on steam makes some safe sales, even the shittiest steam games have been bought a few times.
Also don't forget you can sell it anywhere else.
Asking for distribution rights in exchange for tech?
Smart move. Wonder how many will bite?
[QUOTE=woolio1;47259134]Asking for distribution rights in exchange for tech?
Smart move. Wonder how many will bite?[/QUOTE]
Many.
Not calling that royalties is borderline lying, as steam takes a percentage anyway.
Including me, in 4-8 years probably
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[QUOTE=DrDevil;47259152]Not calling that royalties is borderline lying, as steam takes a percentage anyway.[/QUOTE]
Effectively free. You can use the tech if you put your game on Steam, which considering it's the largest digital game distributor in the world, is pretty much inevitable in the modern market.
It's free as in beer.
[QUOTE=DrDevil;47259152]Not calling that royalties is borderline lying, as steam takes a percentage anyway.[/QUOTE]
And you can also release on any other platform.
Yeah there's definitely still a big hook by forcing you to release your game on Steam.
You might be looking into doing that anyway, but if you don't make it through Greenlight (which still has a 100 bucks entry fee if I recall correctly), you're pretty much out of options it seems. No chance to release some first few projects for a few bucks to test the waters.
Unless I misunderstood how this works.
edit: whoops, should've read more than the snippet in the OP:
[quote]However, and crucially, developers are going to be free to also sell their game anywhere else, which means you can also use stores that take far lower cuts. [/quote]
So looks like you've got to have a Steam version, but you're also free to put it up on the humble store or whatever. Sounds way better, tho no mention of Greenlight kinda leaves that question hanging for me. I mean Valve's been trying to phase out Greenlight for a while now, but it's still filtering out a lot of crap and even bypassing the entry fee could lead to unwanted flooding.
[QUOTE=Atlascore;47259173]That's great and all but.. what is Source 2 actually capable of? And is Valve willing to help developers? How well documented are it's dev tools going it be?
Valve has a lot of work to do if they're going to catch up with UE4 and Unity.[/QUOTE]
If it's anything like the branch of source they're using for Dota 2, it should be fairly capable.
[QUOTE=Atlascore;47259173]That's great and all but.. what is Source 2 actually capable of? And is Valve willing to help developers? How well documented are it's dev tools going it be?
Valve has a lot of work to do if they're going to catch up with UE4 and Unity.[/QUOTE]
take a look at what Dota 2's tools can do and you have a good idea of what Source 2 is capable of in terms of map making and model importing.
[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;47259175]Yeah there's definitely still a big hook by forcing you to release your game on Steam.
You might be looking into doing that anyway, but if you don't make it through Greenlight (which still has a 100 bucks entry fee if I recall correctly), you're pretty much out of options it seems. No chance to release some first few projects for a few bucks to test the waters.
Unless I misunderstood how this works.[/QUOTE]
I think it might count as your greenlight entry fee.
[QUOTE=DrDevil;47259152]Not calling that royalties is borderline lying, as steam takes a percentage anyway.[/QUOTE]
To be fair, they could take extra percentages on top of that if they were interested.
My question is what happens if a game (like Hatred) doesn't get accepted to steam, but is using source 2? Do the game devs not get to publish their game, or do they just end paying Valve a fee? The latter would make more sense, but it'll be interesting to see what happens regardless.
[QUOTE=Itauske Roken;47259183]take a look at what Dota 2's tools can do and you have a good idea of what Source 2 is capable of in terms of map making and model importing.[/QUOTE]
People keep praising the Dota 2 mapping tools but I really couldn't care any less about them honestly. My main concern is about whether or not actually creating a game, ie writing code for Source 2, will be a bearable experience. They'll need to do a lot better than just updating their 90's era Hammer tool to rope anyone in for anything remotely serious.
[QUOTE=srobins;47259209]People keep praising the Dota 2 mapping tools but I really couldn't care any less about them honestly. My main concern is about whether or not actually creating a game, ie writing code for Source 2, will be a bearable experience. They'll need to do a lot better than just updating their 90's era Hammer tool to rope anyone in for anything remotely serious.[/QUOTE]
I guess we'll have to see how they've changed the APIs, then. I'd imagine the engine's probably been rebuilt almost entirely by this point, so if they've changed the interfaces for the newest builds it should be sufficient.
Then again, it'll be interesting to see the developer breakdown.
this makes me feel excited :quagmire:
Isn't valve like building a replacement for greenlight?
[QUOTE=eirexe;47259286]Isn't valve like building a replacement for greenlight?[/QUOTE]
As far as I've understood it they want to move away from the model entirely and have Steam be an open market anyone can submit to.
[QUOTE=dgg;47259294]As far as I've understood it they want to move away from the model entirely and have Steam be an open market anyone can submit to.[/QUOTE]
that'll be a nightmare but i am fully accepting of any new ideas and experiments they perform.
[QUOTE=dgg;47259294]As far as I've understood it they want to move away from the model entirely and have Steam be an open market anyone can submit to.[/QUOTE]
They better implement a vetting process for keeping out obviously shitty and half-assed games then.
While Valve's obviously trying to get rid of Greenlight and let the community sort out the shit, I do wonder how they're gonna get reliable rid of all the Steam-rules-violating stuff that the $100 barrier is supposed to hold off, like spam, malware or explicit pornography.
Greenlight lets them test those files before they finally get approved, but if you release them on Steam directly, a couple customers will have to get burned before the reports amount to enough to alert the support team - and Valve is notoriously terrible when it comes to refunding policies. At least Early Access warns you about some of the risks of unfinished projects.
[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;47259397]While Valve's obviously trying to get rid of Greenlight and let the community sort out the shit, I do wonder how they're gonna get reliable rid of all the Steam-rules-violating stuff that the $100 barrier is supposed to hold off, like spam, malware or explicit pornography.
Greenlight lets them test those files before they finally get approved, but if you release them on Steam directly, a couple customers will have to get burned before the reports amount to enough to alert the support team - and Valve is notoriously terrible when it comes to refunding policies. At least Early Access warns you about some of the risks of unfinished projects.[/QUOTE]
Valve hardly does anything with Greenlight though.
Literally broken games have been put out on Steam that somehow passed Greenlight.
Valve just wants to lose the responsibility and gain as much profit as possible without doing anything for it.
[QUOTE=eirexe;47259127]Yes, but for everyone, not just you because you use source2, any game you make is probably going to be on steam already, and just being on steam makes some safe sales, even the shittiest steam games have been bought a few times.
Also don't forget you can sell it anywhere else.[/QUOTE]
It's still like ~25% compared the the 5% epic is asking for. And even if you launch everywhere else, you can be sure it will sell the most on Steam, anyway.
So yeah, no, it's not really any more free than UE4 is.
Imagine beginning a dev carrer right now
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;47259433]It's still like ~25% compared the the 5% epic is asking for. And even if you launch everywhere else, you can be sure it will sell the most on Steam, anyway.
So yeah, no, it's not really any more free than UE4 is.[/QUOTE]
But if your intention is to put it on steam, you'll be losing a cut of ~35% for both UE4 and steam.
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;47259433]It's still like ~25% compared the the 5% epic is asking for. And even if you launch everywhere else, you can be sure it will sell the most on Steam, anyway.
So yeah, no, it's not really any more free than UE4 is.[/QUOTE]
And if you use Unreal Engine or Unity you aren't going to want to put your game on Steam and, if you do, you're not still going to see the majority of sales from Steam most likely?
[QUOTE=DaMastez;47259535]And if you use Unreal Engine or Unity you aren't going to want to put your game on Steam ...[/QUOTE]
Why? It's the biggest PC distribution platform.
Makes complete sense honestly.
Someone develops on the new engine, they create a game/standalone and they host it on Steam. In the end valve sees profit.
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