They aren’t lending a hand. This is the current state of affairs:
What we are currently looking at is offering a completely vanilla version of Blender as a free download on Steam that is completely the same as that offered on other websites. We’d hope that this will get enough of our users exposed to and interested in Blender so they will be inclined to work on Blender plugins that would talk to Steam’s backend services such as Workshop.
So, is this really such a great thing as people make this out? People are right now fantasizing about what glorious things might come from this, but the reality looks quite a bit different. Some guy at Valve is tasked to integrate Blender into Steam Workshop. Big deal? I don’t think so.
I remember reading a comment or two that you were quite the handful around here in your Blender youth. Seems funny to me, since you’re a pretty mellow dude these days.
While kids often lack maturity, over the long term I think it could potentially be beneficial to have a generation of kids growing up on Blender. I’m not really sure how many kids actually dabble in 3D though. Well, other than Minecraft. Even at places like TigSource the number of pixel artists dwarfs 3D artists.
Edit: BluePrintRandom, you are one weird dude. Valve guy asks GPL Licensing question and gets bombarded with a Project Wrectified ad. Ugh. :spin:
One could’ve seen me as a little tyrant back when I joined the forum under my original account back in 2004, of course I got banned twice and on the second time would not be here for a little while.
Of course I came back under a different name, later changed it to ‘Cyborg Dragon’ which then led to a two year period of people banging their heads when I declared that I was a Dragon. (don’t ask, you might bang yours too).
Of course, old news and off topic, but I will note that BPR has single-handedly turned Wrectified into the most frequently advertised game project in Blender history (even giving Dead Cyborg and Yo Frankie! a run for its money). He’s mentioned it on the mailing list multiple times, once at CGTalk, and I assume anywhere else that he’s registered at. At one point it seemed like he wanted all of the BGE users to drop their projects and instead collaborate on his to bring money to BGE development (the majority of answers being of course an obvious ‘no thanks’).
To put this in perspective - I’ve been in contact with JP and others from Valve (they added a donation system, to mark a percentage of sales going to Blender Foundation).
I guess I don’t understand how this doesn’t equate to Valve donating money to Blender foundation. Maybe it’s a lie or maybe there’s some kind of trickery or something. I remember when they announced the original plane. It’s basically a way for Valve to get some publicity for helping out all the different modeling and animation apps in the hopes that these companies will turn around and build in support for their engine and…
…Wait a minute… I just realized something… is Zalamander the only one arguing against this? And we are all worked up because one person is against it? Really guys?
The big question in my mind right now is why are you so anti-Blender/Steam support?
I am not.
It’s the users donation money, which is optional. What if I sold you a product on top of which you can add a donation sum, which I then promise to deliver to a charity of your choice? Would you equate that to me donating the money?
…Wait a minute… I just realized something… is Zalamander the only one arguing against this? And we are all worked up because one person is against it? Really guys?
I’m not against this. People just read what they want to read. Multiple people have read this news and are now imagining that Valve donates money or development time towards Blender. They’re not.
I’m for a reality check and against all this cheering for Valve for something that is pretty much universally to their advantage, when they could do a lot better.
Anyway, I see no issue of Valve bringing Blender to Steam. At worst, you bring in a few extra users for no loss, at best, Blender could well become the best thing since sliced bread. In the latter scenario, Valve may even develop some extensions for Blender that can benefit modding.
This seems like a positive move, and one I’ve wished for. Valve already has an application category and I think this would be a good source of users and donations.
Considering Valve’s history and how the company works, some future integration into their workshop tools and game engines could bring a lot of future users and potential developers to Blender.
To put this in perspective - I’ve been in contact with JP and others from Valve (they added a donation system, to mark a percentage of sales going to Blender Foundation).
If the mentionned donation system is this :
It is not Valve that is donating, but the “item creators in Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 Workshops”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but in that link, doesn’t it state (in the graphic posted):
“You can allocate a portion of Valve’s split of the sales revenue with pre-approved third party organizations or individuals that have helped you create this item. You will be asked to pick from a list of organizations and individuals, and then determine how you wish to split up this revenue between them”
So isn’t it a portion of valve’s sales revenue, of an item, that would go to whomever the creator of an item decides?
Wouldn’t this be like selling an item on turbosquid and turbosquid sending parts of it’s profits to blender?
Randy
edit: Also, this is just an initial announcement, and while I am sure it has been very well thought out, I’m sure this isn’t final at this point. There are probably license issues and other fine points that attorneys will argue over before anything final is in place and working.
Who’s arguing against what now? All the announcement says is that valve wants a steamworks addon for Blender and that they’d like somebody to write it for them.
Now if Blender was proprietary like most other 3d software, asking the original authors would be the best way of getting their addon. But it isn’t. In the wider FOSS world, if companies want some particular functionality from a project, they will often just implement it and then it gets merged upstream. Personally I think it’s a bit of a pity Good Guy Valve doesn’t seem interested in doing things this way, but far be it from me to actually argue against it, that would be silly. If they can get someone to do it, more power to them.
And also that they’d like to mirror Blender on their servers. Which they can do at any time anyway.
Oh yes, and it is rather nice of them to share the revenue Blender-made hats are bringing them since they didn’t have to do that.
Yes, looks like I was wrong, it’s indeed a cut from their percentage. So, it’s an unspecified amount from the 75% that Valve takes off their users item sales.
Does that make it better? I’m not quite sure. Charity is always advertising, as well. Maybe they do it in order to make the 75% cut seem less brutal?
How is this any worse than Google summer of code? Blender can only benefit from this relationship, and for anyone that’s scared of the forums getting flooded with kids they could always host their own Blender based forums on Steam.
When it comes to revenue generation, we as users could always sell items (on Steam) and donate the revenue to the Blender Foundation. Why not? Look at how much is being given away on Blendswap already. More funds = more developers = more goodness:)
Potential more users/awareness == Good (who are you to say new Blender users should be cherry-picked!)
Potentially more/new plugins for exporting to game engines == Good
Potential donations == Good
Valve communicate with Blender == Good
Valve consider Blender good software to create mods for their games == Good
Valve consider to place Blender for download on their service for their modders to download == Good
Positive publicity from big games company == Good
Do you expect Valve to come along and hire 20x Blender devs full time so they can make Half life 4 with it??? God even then you would be complaining that Blender had been bought or something. Always negative.
So, everybody who doesn’t join the Valve cheer squad and dares say something critical is just being “negative”? Would you prefer everything to be absolutely one-sided?
Do you expect Valve to come along and hire 20x Blender devs full time so they can make Half life 4 with it???
I would expect a company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars, which wants to leverage free software such as Blender to have users create yet more content for their products, to at least develop the necessary importers/exporters themselves, not to expect their users to do that for them as well. I find that kind of attitude pathetic, that’s all.
Which is the most ironic thing that I will read today because in the same message from Ton it is also stated.
Valve was very interested to find other ways to support Blender, and I suggested them to more activily involve users of their platform in a stakeholder role. That could be by adding forums there, maintaining todo or issue lists, inviting people to contribute to Blender (C or with add-ons).
So it is not that one singles out the other. And to be honest if they would take Blender and pour millions in it to extend it, there would be also be criticism from guys stating they are abusing the free work of others instead of taking their millions and developed their own 3D program… .
There also seems to be already (if I read correctly) a plugin that works with steam, so if they also would take their millions and develop their own exporter there would be also be drama because they don’t respect the work of the guy who poured all this time and work… There seems to be always a reason to find something to complaint about.
The reality is that they asked a question and you don’t know how this will evolve. In theory it could even be that because of the list they contact the developer of that plugin and help him with resources (information, money, bug patches, …) that is something that nobody knows at this point.
What I really find a pathetic attitude is people who are really jumping the gun, pointing fingers and are moaning before something really well started. If after a couple of months it really seems that they only want to take blender and get others to develop exporters for free, then you may moan. For now it is all premature to bitch about something that for now is really not here.
And the reality is also that they are not required to ask the community anything, but they have the decency to talk in what is possible and the best way to go.
Valve is donating to Blender via allocation of funds, additionally, they have in the past contributed to open sources projects and the growth of linux. It is not entirely out of the picture that direct sponsorships wont occur either as if you have listen to Valve’s Gabe Newell, he has pretty much sided with open source playing a huge role in the future of software. HE also is a huge proponent for user generated content, which allows games to grow and keep growing at a much faster pace. This can be done via accessible tools such as Blender.
Yes it may contribute to the change in Blender’s target audience and it may influence design changes…but thats a good thing, not a bad one.
Yes, we wouldn’t want the BA forums to lost it’s matur… Bwahahaha, sorry, I couldn’t finish that sentence.
BA already has tons of kids coming to Blender because it’s free. (I imagine ‘that might be a little ambitious for your first time game’ is the most said sentence in the BGE forum, and I never come there) It also must so happens to have tons of other demographics coming to it, and has Blender cookie, so I suggest that they are sent that direction.
More prudently, there might be some problems with artistic nudity. But other than that, people are stupid whether they are thirteen or thirtyfive, and there’s nothing to do but keep your cool and act like an adult in all cases.
Why nobody mention Source Filmmaker? Because you are neither IClone nor MovieStorm user?
If there is something good out of this, I think it would be much easier to create models for Source engine and develop machinima via Source Filmmaker, which can be used to create commercial animation for free. They could have charged it at ICLone or MovieStorm price, or more, considering it was based on Source. But they give it for FREE.
They might haven’t donated yet (yet since I don’t know how much of their portion have been given to Blender Institute - no info on that) but at least they already provide real time 3d animation fan a good machinima software, based on awesome engine - no less.