• Source 2 Is Actually Free, Like, For Free
    61 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Killuah;47259437]Imagine beginning a dev carrer right now[/QUOTE] The competition is already ridiculous, this will only make it even worse. Indie scene is blooming, but the middle size publishers have huge problems. THQ is gone, Sega is in trouble, etc... I wonder will the market eventually get over saturated ? I for example simply stopped buying new games a year ago because my library went out of control (and being unemployed didn't help either).
[QUOTE=Zatar963;47259669]Why? It's the biggest PC distribution platform.[/QUOTE] Pretty sure that's sarcasm. Obviously most PC devs will want their game on Steam, and probably their highest sales will come from it.
[QUOTE=dgg;47259432]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] That's one way to look at it I guess. From what they've said themselves when Greenlight popped up it's because they don't want to be a bottleneck. Which makes sense considering how many projects Valve is already working on, including ongoing support for various multiplayer titles. Not like Steam's getting any smaller either and Valve's flat company structure doesn't allow for easy integration of mass hires either from what the little employer booklet lets us assume. They could outsource it to a different third party, but that's not without its own problems either and seems to conflict with Valve's general movements of getting away from depending on third party infrastructure and finding new ways for integrating user-generated content. Doesn't surprise me at all that they're not doing anything with Greenlight itself tho, like I've said they've been trying to get rid of it completely for a while now. That's why I presume community-outsorced curation features like enhanced hubs, tagging, reviews, etc, have been rolled out. It's definitely not as simple as "more games = more money", they wouldn't have any curation (Valve-managed, Greenlight-managed or community-managed) at all if it was that simple. That's not to say they've found some miracle solution either, it's full of obvious problems and Valve's straining customer patience with each of their typical experimental iterations.
Does this mean if your game gets taken off Steam, you'd have to take it down everywhere else too?
[QUOTE=woolio1;47259134]Asking for distribution rights in exchange for tech? Smart move. Wonder how many will bite?[/QUOTE] "We'll let you use our highly malleable customization tools, but in exchange, you have to sell your product through the single most popular form of distribution for PC gaming."
[QUOTE=DrDevil;47259152]Not calling that royalties is borderline lying, as steam takes a percentage anyway.[/QUOTE] Its better than paying for an engine and then paying for royalties, and then paying a percentage to the distribution platform.
this is actually a fucking amazing business move.
[QUOTE=Joey90;47259782]Pretty sure that's sarcasm. Obviously most PC devs will want their game on Steam, and probably their highest sales will come from it.[/QUOTE] Yea, it seems I worded that really poorly; I was trying to pose two rhetorical questions. The point I was trying to make was that most games are going to want to be on steam because that is the biggest platform anyway and, as such, those games are likely going to see the most sales from steam, so effectively you're just losing money going with any other engine because you have to pay for the license fee itself on top of the cut going to steam.
[QUOTE=Killuah;47259437]Imagine beginning a dev career right now[/QUOTE] I'm trying to right now and it's kinda overwhelming with 3 big-name engines becoming free at once. My school has a club that's going to be offering tutorials for Unity and Unreal, I hope we can get Source on there as well at some point.
hopefully my "skills" with hammer will carry over to the level editor, i'm not too great at UDK...
[QUOTE=AntonioR;47259777]The competition is already ridiculous, this will only make it even worse. Indie scene is blooming, but the middle size publishers have huge problems. THQ is gone, Sega is in trouble, etc... I wonder will the market eventually get over saturated ? I for example simply stopped buying new games a year ago because my library went out of control (and being unemployed didn't help either).[/QUOTE] We need another 80s gaming bubble to cut the chaff and clean the slate for another set of revolutionary game designers and smart publishers to take the wheel. It could happen. Game budgets are ballooning, and the Call of Duty model is only sustainable for so long. We're already seeing studio closures, soon we could see the death of some modern publishers and a total industry breakdown. Nothing in the current market is sustainable. We're on a railway track that's headed for the cliff.
[QUOTE=ProfHappycat7;47260808]hopefully my "skills" with hammer will carry over to the level editor, i'm not too great at UDK...[/QUOTE] Have you tried the UE4 editor? Coming from Source I found it really easy to pick up.
[QUOTE=Zatar963;47261116]Have you tried the UE4 editor? Coming from Source I found it really easy to pick up.[/QUOTE] For me, UE4 feels a lot more limited, I'm basically constrained to making all my level assets in a program I'm not familiar with (Blender, Maya, 3DS) and then importing them into the game engine, then snapping them together. With Source 2 you have [I]really[/I] in depth editing tools, you can edit imported meshes [I]in hammer[/I], and a ton of other really crazy mesh tools. That said, UE4's material editor is miles ahead of anything Source 2 appears to have. [editline]3-04[/editline] That's not to say UE4 is objectively "worse" than Source 2 seems, I think having authored assets that are then copied around allows artists to make more detailed environments, simply because a lot of assets are reused in the same scene; whereas Source 2 looks to cater more to having each part of the world custom modeled in the editor (That's again, not to say Source 2 can't, it has a asset browser that allows you to do the same thing you do in UE4 in S2). I think it goes back to engine heritage, IIRC Unreal has always been asset based, BSP only for mock scenes and base geometry, while Quake/Goldsrc/Source have had all the "work" done in BSP geo. For reference: [url=http://s.gvid.me/s/2015/03/05/sw9-1425540245.webm]Me fumbling about in S2[/url]. [url=http://s.gvid.me/s/2015/03/05/095-1425540790.webm]And me fumbling about in UE4[/url].
[QUOTE=woolio1;47259134]Asking for distribution rights in exchange for tech? Smart move. Wonder how many will bite?[/QUOTE] And its a distribution platform people want to be on to, its a win no mater how you look at it
[QUOTE=glitchvid;47261221]For me, UE4 feels a lot more limited, I'm basically constrained to making all my level assets in a program I'm not familiar with (Blender, Maya, 3DS) and then importing them into the game engine, then snapping them together. With Source 2 you have [I]really[/I] in depth editing tools, you can edit imported meshes [I]in hammer[/I], and a ton of other really crazy mesh tools. That said, UE4's material editor is miles ahead of anything Source 2 appears to have. [editline]3-04[/editline] That's not to say UE4 is objectively "worse" than Source 2 seems, I think having authored assets that are then copied around allows artists to make more detailed environments, simply because a lot of assets are reused in the same scene; whereas Source 2 looks to cater more to having each part of the world custom modeled in the editor (That's again, not to say Source 2 can't, it has a asset browser that allows you to do the same thing you do in UE4 in S2). I think it goes back to engine heritage, IIRC Unreal has always been asset based, BSP only for mock scenes and base geometry, while Quake/Goldsrc/Source have had all the "work" done in BSP geo.[/QUOTE] ergo pros and cons
[QUOTE=DaMastez;47259535]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] Its still not free at all. [editline]5th March 2015[/editline] It makes the engine a free bonus to releasing your game on steam, if anything.
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;47261634]Its still not free at all. [editline]5th March 2015[/editline] It makes the engine a free bonus to releasing your game on steam, if anything.[/QUOTE]Uhh, no? You don't get the engine for releasing on Steam.
[QUOTE=Doctor Zedacon;47261738]Uhh, no? You don't get the engine for releasing on Steam.[/QUOTE] You literally do tho? [editline]5th March 2015[/editline] Obviously, speaking in terms of right to use it commercially. If you only talk about downloading and using it for your own shenanigans, UE4 and Unity are completely free just as well.
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;47261783]You literally do tho?[/QUOTE] Depends on how you define free. Is the only requirement for free that you don't pay anything out of pocket? Then Source 2, UE4, and Unity are free. If you consider free being no out-of-pocket [I]and[/I] no percentage of gross, then neither UE4, Unity, or Source 2 are free. I'm working on a commercial project, and I personally consider Source 2 sounding like a better deal, we're planning on a steam release anyway (so 30% gross goes to steam) and with UE4 that's an extra 5% of gross we loose, 35% VS 30%. Either way, it's fantastic the bar to entry is so low for basically every major engine (Except you Frostbite, we'll wait...) Basically anyone who can do simple programming can create an awesome experience given the time and motivation.
[QUOTE=glitchvid;47261794]Depends on how you define free. Is the only requirement for free that you don't pay anything out of pocket? Then Source 2, UE4, and Unity are free. If you consider free being no out-of-pocket [I]and[/I] no percentage of gross, then neither UE4, Unity, or Source 2 are free. I'm working on a commercial project, and I personally consider Source 2 sounding like a better deal, we're planning on a steam release anyway (so 30% gross goes to steam) and with UE4 that's an extra 5% of gross we loose, 35% VS 30%. Either way, it's fantastic the bar to entry is so low for basically every major engine (Except you Frostbite, we'll wait...) Basically anyone who can do simple programming can create an awesome experience given the time and motivation.[/QUOTE] Then its fair to call UE4 slightly more expensive. Not less free. [editline]5th March 2015[/editline] And it boils down onto your personal economic assessment of what offers you more for its price, whats a better product, the missed opportunities of slower workflow, etc etc. It is definitely not a decision between free and paid, tho.
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;47261783]You literally do tho?[/QUOTE]No, you don't. If you release a game on Steam, you aren't suddenly getting Source 2 with that. This isn't some two way street. Releasing a game on Steam is just releasing a game on Steam regardless of Source 2. But Source 2 inherently means a Steam release. All A's are B's, but not all B's are A's.
[QUOTE=Doctor Zedacon;47261928]No, you don't. If you release a game on Steam, you aren't suddenly getting Source 2 with that. This isn't some two way street. Releasing a game on Steam is just releasing a game on Steam regardless of Source 2. But Source 2 inherently means a Steam release. All A's are B's, but not all B's are A's.[/QUOTE] You are electing to be selectively ignorant and pedantic to say something that's absolutely irrelevant. From the point of view of obtaining commercial licence and ability to use source engine you have to release on steam, if you are releasing your game on steam it may use source engine if you wish. You get a free drink with menu, but since you can't get the free drink without the menu, every economically thinking person immediately understands you can just count the cost of the drink as part of the cost of the menu, even if you don't actually feel like having the drink - the cost stays. It's still not free.
This interests me it seems like they are discussing a facet of pbr. [IMG]http://cdn1.24liveblog.com/images/2015/03/05/img_54f7b4c086298.jpg[/IMG]
[QUOTE=Proj3ct_ZeRo;47262052]This interests me it seems like they are discussing a facet of pbr. [IMG]http://cdn1.24liveblog.com/images/2015/03/05/img_54f7b4c086298.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE] It's known they were going to go with PBR, current S2 states "Our materials are physically based" in the material editor. I'm a bit concerned though, it looks with all of this fancy shader work we might not see a material editor like UE4, which I think is extremely important for having really useful materials. They mentioned Sebastian, whom is doing the PBR system over at DICE right now, so hopefully they take inspiration from his recent work since it's "truly" "next gen" in my opinion; I eagerly await more information on S2.
[QUOTE=dgg;47259432]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] Remember that time when that one game released without the executable included? [editline]5th March 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=glitchvid;47261794]Depends on how you define free. Is the only requirement for free that you don't pay anything out of pocket? Then Source 2, UE4, and Unity are free. If you consider free being no out-of-pocket [I]and[/I] no percentage of gross, then neither UE4, Unity, or Source 2 are free. I'm working on a commercial project, and I personally consider Source 2 sounding like a better deal, we're planning on a steam release anyway (so 30% gross goes to steam) and with UE4 that's an extra 5% of gross we loose, 35% VS 30%. Either way, it's fantastic the bar to entry is so low for basically every major engine (Except you Frostbite, we'll wait...) Basically anyone who can do simple programming can create an awesome experience given the time and motivation.[/QUOTE] Take other platforms into account if you're planning on porting. We still don't know if it's going to be viable on consoles and whether Valve is going to take a cut from those sales.
[QUOTE=AntonioR;47259777]The competition is already ridiculous, this will only make it even worse. Indie scene is blooming, but the middle size publishers have huge problems. THQ is gone, Sega is in trouble, etc... I wonder will the market eventually get over saturated ? I for example simply stopped buying new games a year ago because my library went out of control (and being unemployed didn't help either).[/QUOTE] If you want my opinion, it's good to invest and become a publisher, one day there will be a shitton of games out there needing one.
I said this in news nose, but I'm sure valve will have some sort of license if you don't plan on releasing on PC
[QUOTE=Tuskin;47262974]I said this in news nose, but I'm sure valve will have some sort of license if you don't plan on releasing on PC[/QUOTE] Well yeah, just like now if you get in contact with the right people, and wave some money around; you can get basically anything licensed.
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