Certain individuals parading that the leaks are the “greatest thing to happen to the community”. Meanwhile, many respected Source devs are concerned it’s the end for Source licensing, due to the way this leak occurred. If you enjoy and support Source projects - this leak has only harmed future projects’ chances of getting licensed. Yes this is interesting, yes it will probably lead to more cut-content projects, and yes people are talking about Valve right now, but I believe in the long run this will have a net negative effect. I also do not support the immoral way this has come out, which is (alleged) to involve social engineering, manipulation and exploiting Valve’s trust in license holders.
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In our case (Zombie Panic! Source), we've been in the talks with Valve in the past regarding source engine license. They always seem friendly and open with this matter, but now they have gone silence twice and we shifted emails with different employees (last one left the company). Last time they went full silence was during TF2 leak. Now, this recent giga leak might make things difficult to make business with Valve. We're probably on the same boat as Classic Offensive. I'll get in contact with Valve again hoping for an update. Hopefully they give us a little slack since we're a very old Source mod and one of the first released via Steamworks back in 2008.
I didn’t know you worked on ZPS!
As a dev myself, the thought of never being able to get a source license is really scary. I see all the people being happy that it happened but it's not a feeling anyone should share. The leaks are the worst thing to happen to the community since SteamPipe.
It's funny how we can't have nice things in the Source community. I remember where there was a time where few Source projects were getting the Source engine license for free, and then the leak happened (2021-2022?). This was the same year where Valve updated their Steamworks documentation regarding this topic overall almost cutting connections or ways to provide the license ever again unless you pay it for commercial reasons (selling the game like Black Mesa).
In another hand, Source Engine is getting old each year and it feels like hell working with it when you have other Engines with better documentation and updated tools for better workflow. Unless Valve starts being more open and provide the tools of Source 2 kit for the community in the near future, modding in Source might start to get harder and harder to a moment where nobody will develop a mod on it.
I'm not sure Valve actually cares for Source mods, exactly due to what you just said — it's a nearly 20-year-old engine they still have to support because of it. I'd find it perfectly understandable if Valve dropped support for it altogether, most games don't even last a quarter of that time before shutting down. As for Source 2, given the ways this community has treated them for the past few years, I definitely don't blame them if they decide to keep the engine in-house. Source and Goldsource before it being so open and welcoming to modders wasn't a right we had, it was a privilege we were given by a mod-friendly company. It's too bad this community decided to act like this and ruin things for everyone.
They are (or were) still giving out licenses - our current sponsor MCV being a very recent one using the CSGO branch. I mentioned in another comment but the principle of people exploiting license agreements applies to Source 2 also, should that open up more.
Like Alex said, there was a time where Valve did care a bit and was open to resolve community mod wanting to publish their project to Steam. Which is why we gave our shot to make business with them where we could use the license to debug our issues better and be free from our limitations. But the past TF2 leak (during bot crises) made things a bit difficult, resulting in an almost impossible contract with them on Source license. I do agree with you regarding Source 2 case. I probably lost my hopes to see the kit free for use in the future from them.
Sad times. There are people using this just to get views and followers on Twitter.
cmon dawg
I totally agree with you Alex, leaks are more harm than good, of course, it's nice to us fans to hear and see all this unused content, but it cost Valve millions to make them, and since they're "cut content", Valve obviously didn't want any of us to see them. This sucks.
I don't agree with him at all.
and now i wanna give the list of my source mods i was looking foward to that will probably never get a license now or it will have a really hard time publishing one on steam: -Portal Community Edtion -Momentum Mod -Counter Strike: Classic Offensive -Deathmatch Classic: Refragged -Team Fortress: Throwback -The Espionage Project -Team Deathmatch Classic -XBLAH's Modding Tool (this one isnt a mod but i wasnt able to release in steam even with a store page ready) and JBMod. rest in piss everyone.
WAIT. i forgot Half Life 2: Remaster Collection
It's both great news and terrible news for the Source community. On one hand, we've got all these cool unused assets now. On the other hand, Will Valve ever give out Source licenses ever again?
Something else is that this leak could cause people to loose their licenses, which could be the death of a lot off smaller/less heard of projects
so you're telling me that operation black mesa will possibly be the last licensed source game?
Also Hunt Down the Freeman cheating its way to greenlight is partly to blame for Valve making Source engine licenses harder to obtain.
HDTF didn't cheat its way onto the platform. All it did was pass by with Valve being very hands off with fan creations, resulting in Valve making a fool of themselves and then punishing licensees. Valve ultimately starting loosening back up for licensing 6+ months after the release of HDTF.
Cheat cheat cheat it did and there's no denying.
In an ideal world, once Valve decides to push that Source 2 version of CS:GO that allegedly exists and all their multiplayer games that would be affected by source code releasing pushed to S2, I'd hope Valve would open source their unused content and the Source engine so people wouldn't pull this kind of dishonest stuff. This is a pipe dream of course, and if it did happen it'd probably be in the far future.
*Kind of like what happened with the Quake and later Id-Tech engines.
I think Valve needed a kick in the ass after allowing HDTF onto Steam. Valve was way too lenient. But I also understand this may push Valve to the other extreme, being way too strict. This is to say, I'm conflicted.
Valve will have trust issues, yes. But I don't think valve will stop licensing Source. The most likely situation is that they will never let people have access to their repos.
Then why would they provide a license to people if they don't provide the engine code? Nothing is stopping people from making content from Source Base 2013 without an unique license.
I do enjoy source projects but admit it: source engine is getting old.
and? it's still used for a fuckton of mods and games to this day plus, all things considered, it's held up pretty damn well
The principle of this could be applied to Source 2 also - giving licenses to small projects now = risk.
Especially after Hunt Down The Disaster was released