14 DAY TRIAL // Without a doubt one of the most important reveals of the week was the Source 2 "soft" launch through the mod tools of Dota 2, Valve's hugely successful multiplayer online role-playing (MOBA) game.
For a huge amount of time Valve's been rumored to be working on major sequels, like the perennial Half-Life 3, not to mention Left 4 Dead 3, Portal 3, and much more.
However, the studio's been busy with a lot of current and quite popular projects, including Dota 2, one of the most played free-to-play online games currently on the market, as well as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Both of them are dominating the Steam popularity charts, with hundreds of thousands of users playing them each day.
Now, it seems that Valve is leveraging the popularity of Dota 2, which just saw its record-breaking The International 4 eSport tournament, to release Source 2, the new iteration of its own game engine.
Source, as most gamers can remember, was originally released ten years ago, with Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2, demonstrating stunning graphics. They also proved that the tech has a huge degree of versatility, being used not just for first-person experiences but also for lots of indie projects, not to mention blockbusters like Titanfall.
Of course, the true test for Source was Dota 2, which was released formally last year, once again proving that the versatile technology can also power a MOBA experience.
Now, thanks to the mod tools, thousands, if not tens of thousands of users are jumping into Source 2, as they love Dota 2 and want to work on mods for it.
As we saw earlier this week, the mod tools update added a lot of new files and processes for Dota 2. Once the new editor starts, it's wildly different and much more streamlined than Valve's original Hammer program. After a user completes a mod and wants to try it out, the editor starts a different version of Dota 2, running in the new Source 2 engine.
As of right now, Reddit users are noticing lowered performance figures but, considering the mod tools and for sure the Source 2 port of Dota 2 are in alpha stage, expect lots of improvements.
For now, however, Valve is essentially crowd-testing the Source 2 engine, the Dota 2 Source 2 port, and, at the same time, it's developing the Dota 2 community by drawing in modders and by getting them used to Source 2's new tools.
This sort of community effort is, in my opinion, almost as important as a high profile release, like for example Half-Life 3 or the rumored Left 4 Dead 3.
Sure, a blockbuster game can establish an engine. Just look at Battlefield 3 with Frostbite 2, Crysis 2 with CryEngine, or the upcoming Fortnite with Unreal Engine 4.
However, Valve is more interested in building a community even around its game engine than to brag about its capabilities. It can impress regular players with Half-Life 3 eventually, but growing a group of users through popular experiences like Dota 2 or, hopefully, CS:GO, can go a long way in making sure that Source 2 has a lifecycle as long as the original version.