Nvidia Embraces Modding Community For ‘Half Life 2’ Project, Valve Apparently Cool With It
from the mod-squad dept
It’s always nice when you get several stories in a row that contrast with one another in order to make a point. We were just discussing Rockstar’s decision to scoop up a roleplaying and modding community in order to build in new and interesting ways to play GTA and Red Dead Redemption games. What I had hoped out loud would be a sign that Rockstar was turning over a new leaf on modding communities was dashed almost immediately as the company then went after another group of mod-makers for the crime of being fans of its games and trying to make them more interesting and playable. Game companies don’t have to do this sort of thing.
And that is now evidenced by Nvidia’s recent announcement that it has partnered with four different modding communities to push out a new graphically updated version of Half-Life 2, with Valve’s silence on the announcement serving as its tacit endorsement.
Awkwardly titled Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, the remaster is currently in development with no set release date. Nvidia announced it today as part of its pre-Gamescom presentations. The remaster will use RTX Remix, which is Nvidia’s toolkit for bringing ray-tracing to classic PC games. RTX Remix was previously announced using The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind as an example; it seeks to give community modders and hobbyists the ability to do ray-tracing conversions for old games, but it’s still only available to a few people.
The people, in this case, are a group of modders from multiple community projects who have banded together under the name Orbifold Studios. The team includes modders who worked on VR Half-Life 2 project Project 17, asset remastering project Half-Life 2 Remade Assets, total conversation mod Raising the Bar: Redux, and another VR mod simply called Half-Life 2 VR, among others.
There has been no public statement I’m aware of by Valve on this project, but it has been made very clear in industry publications that the company behind the original game series has nothing to do with the actual making of this remake. That being said, the company is said to be very aware of the project. Therefore, while I’d love to see a full-throated endorsement of the modding community doing this sort of thing from Valve, its silence and a company like Nvidia’s involvement sure seems to indicate that the company isn’t going to disappear this whole thing.
This thing just kicked off into development, so I suppose there would still be time for Valve to reverse course, but I doubt it will, mostly because I highly doubt Nvidia would announce this at all if there was even a chance that Valve would nix the project. So why is it that Valve can see the usefulness in fan projects like this, but Rockstar can’t?
Filed Under: half life 2, modding, video games
Companies: nvidia, rockstar, steam
Comments on “Nvidia Embraces Modding Community For ‘Half Life 2’ Project, Valve Apparently Cool With It”
Valve has been very supportive of mods involving their projects for a couple of decades, it’s not much of a surprise. There was the whole Black Mesa project for HL1 a while back too.
They provide modding tools for Source-engine projects. Modded TF2 servers have been a huge thing since it launched. The HL1/HL2 modding community is enormous, with some insane mods and game packs. For Portal 2, they added the “Perpetual Testing Initiative”, which greatly simplified creation and sharing of community-made maps. Steam itself has a number of mod-supporting APIs and tools for other games to use.
I’m not sure why you’d be at all concerned about Valve doing anything bad, Tim. Valve is historically very encouraging and permissive when it comes to modding, hell, Counter-Strike started as a mod and Valve hired the team who made it to make a commercial version of it, and that’s not the last time they’ve hired modders either. You can literally find a bunch of mods officially listed on Steam as well, and you can easily access a bunch of modding tools straight from Steam itself courtesy of Valve.
They literally let a bunch of talented folks sell a remake of the original Half-Life (now known as Black Mesa) on Steam. And that’s not the only time games based on the Half Life IP have been sold on Steam due to the Source engine’s rather permissive terms, though that hasn’t always been a good thing – see Hunt Down the Freeman, which has rather infamously been pointed to as an example of Valve/Steam’s lack of quality control.
Also Portal RTX is an official add-on for the original Portal, so I can’t imagine Half Life 2 RTX not being the same for the original game.
So yeah I doubt there’ll be any actual problems. Say what you will about Valve, but when it comes to fan works and modding, they really do right by their fans.
Re:
To be fair, Valve could suddenly, without warning, decide to embrace full control and lawyer up, despite the past behavior.
It’s less likely the aforementioned scenario will happen, considering that Valve itself is run to ensure that it cannot do so (because lmao flat structure) and the aforementioned past behavior.
nVidia, though… now that’s a big company to watch for.
I’d be more surprised if valve wasn’t ok with it, tbh. The original team fortress was a mod, as was the original counter strike. Left 4 Dead has supported mods for most of its lifespan. Half Life has had enormous modding communities for as long as it’s existed. Portal not only has a huge modded test chamber scene, but also the fan game Portal Stories: Mel. Coupled with Black Mesa, yeah, can’t say I’m surprised.
Valve has had a long history of allowing modding to run free.
Two of their most famous games were originally mods that the company bought the IPs for from the creators. And they even created a feature for their store to promote mods for some games (Steam Workshop).
Rockstar has a history of running into problems with music IPs – they’ve had to pull at least two of the GTA games off virtual shelves because the licenses for some of the songs you could hear on the in-game radio expired. No excuse them for siccing their lawyers on people so freely, but it’s one reason they have them on speed dial.