Valve announces Source 2, their first new game engine in 11 years

Scorpus

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valve source gdc source engine source 2 gdc 2015

Valve has finally taken the wraps off their brand new game engine, Source 2, at GDC 2015. As a successor to the original Source engine that launched alongside Counter-Strike: Source in 2004 (pictured above), it'll be Valve's first new game engine in 11 years.

In a press release announcing Source 2, Valve's Jay Stelly said that "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". As such, the game engine will be available for free to content developers, just like the latest versions of the Unreal Engine and Unity.

Not much is known about the Source 2 at this stage, though Valve did mention that they will be releasing a special Vulkan-compatible version of the engine for developers that want to harness the low-overhead API.

Valve didn't mention when Source 2 will become available to developers either, or whether the company has any games in development that use it. It's fair to assume that Valve has Source 2 projects in the works, though they weren't ready to share further details.

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Wait, Valve has been doing something for the last 11 years besides pretend to finish the Half-Life franchise? I thought all the developers retired and moved to some island in the Caribbean with and unlimited revenue stream generated by steam and there they live out their lives in eternal luxury and pleasure. Buuuuut this still isn't available, so perhaps it's another lie meant to preserve faith in a company that's been riding on a couple key franchises for the last decade. I won't believe anything coming from Valve until it's available for purchase, or in this case, download.
 
Looks like just a marketing response to Unreal Engine becoming free for developers just couple days ago.

And with Unreal 4 and now 4.5 being free nothing comes close as a game platform. So much for the Minecraft idiocy.
 
GDC 2015 = GDC 5102 = GDC 5/1-0-2 = GDC 3

I don't know if I'm the only one that see that.
 
Well that was a bit of a surprise for me. I guess if half life 3 is on the cards for valve it would make sense to put it out on the new engine.
 
Isn't the rifle in this picture backward? He's firing right but the ejector and forward assist are on the left? -_0
 
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