So Steam Dev Days is off again and we are here again to bring you the highlights from afar in lonely UK. A few events is the south of the Uk would be nice sometime! I am also jealous of the free bacon that seems to have been given out.
Full agenda is available here for those interested in a handy png image.
You can also see our highlights from the first day here.
Economy Stuff
- Last year Valve paid out over $10 million to users who created content
- Team Fortress 2 had 2349 items built by 661 people last year
- Team Fortress 2 revenue is still growing!
- Over 90% of TF2 content is done by the players
- Valve believe micro transactions work, it's clear from their numbers they have it done correctly
- They believe pay 2 win is fine, if it doesn't upset other players
User Generated Content
- Valve see UGC as a key way to differentiate between movies and books for games and keep them alive.
- TF2 was the first game to use the Steam Workshop in 2011
- Developers have been tweeting that they now want to put UGC into their games
- When Dota 2 workshop launched, it didn't dip into TF2 community, but helped increase it
- Skyrim alone has 19.5K bits of UGC
Image Source
Virtual Reality
- Valve say the PC is the hotbed for VR and Valve will continue to push it.
- Valve currently have no plans to sell their own VR, but that may change.
- They have an API for VR to hook into.
- VR still has a long way to go with lots to work on to make it a more pleasant experience.
- Occulus have released a best practices guide here.
Porting To Linux
You can find links to Icculus talks on porting to Linux here.
Developers - Send Valve your Game Traces
QuoteWe're going through all games in the Steam Linux catalog to ensure they are compatible with our new GL tracer/debugger toolset (VOGL). But this is backwards looking: what we really want is to ensure our full-stream tracing and state snapshot/restore code is compatible and correct with your new (most likely unreleased) GL code.
More info on that can be found here.
Looks like Valve will not be moving away from free 2 play any-time soon, I wouldn't be surprised if they came out with more games built on this model as it is clearly working very well considering their revenue is increasing and increasing by quite a bit from the year before.
There have been reports of Counter Strike: Global Offensive going free 2 play in the future, not from Steam Dev Days, but from other sources. This would make sense given that it has customization options in it now although it remains to be seen how that will affect the game since we Linux gamers don't even have it ported yet. Any guesses as to when we will see the port?
Again you can follow the developers chat away on twitter. Also be sure to follow us on @gamingonlinux on twitter.
Final Note
This is pure speculation, but a developer did note on twitter a secret press release was given out that no one can share, any thoughts as to what it might be? Personally I hope it's a game to go along-side Source Engine 2 which was mentioned yesterday in their OpenGL talk. It could even be Left 4 Dead 3 which was outed by someone who visited their offices.
Thank you to all the developers at Steam Dev Days for tweeting all the info and to everyone who retweeted from developers we don't follow thank you as well.
But they don't have any pay2win items as far as I am aware, lot's of skins but nothing that gives you advantage over other players (unless you count your character looking fabulous as a advantage) at least not for Dota 2 or TF2.
"They believe pay 2 win is fine, if it doesn't upset other players"Last time I played TF2 it had plenty of items that had different statistics including weapons and I had pretty rubbish stuff too.
But they don't have any pay2win items as far as I am aware, lot's of skins but nothing that gives you advantage over other players (unless you count your character looking fabulous as a advantage) at least not for Dota 2 or TF2.
I think the items balance each other out pretty nicely. Good items usually have bad side-effects and you need to think about the loadout synergies to really make the items suit your playstyle. Basically there are no bad weapons or good weapons, there are just weapons that suit other situations better than others."They believe pay 2 win is fine, if it doesn't upset other players"Last time I played TF2 it had plenty of items that had different statistics including weapons and I had pretty rubbish stuff too.
But they don't have any pay2win items as far as I am aware, lot's of skins but nothing that gives you advantage over other players (unless you count your character looking fabulous as a advantage) at least not for Dota 2 or TF2.
http://youtu.be/AgL4wHPeIpo
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