Steam distribution update

Note, I'm not really sure I like the idea of Xonotic on Steam due to some arguments given by Mr. Bougo in the other Steam thread. But, many people have shown interest in this topic so I thought this might be relevant news.

http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-co...tml?august

The links speaks for itself, and iirc, Blender is GPL that why I thought this might be relevant to see how the story evolves.

GPL software can also be released non-GPL if the author chooses to do so by joint licencing. It could therefore be that they are looking for the Blender authors to relicence under a licence that would allow distribution on Steam. I would however think that unlikely as a business would not normally make an approach like this if they wanted a commercial deal. They'd do it the grown up face to face, business to business way, not via a mailing list. Worth following to see which way it goes and under what licence.

Imo if you want Xonotic on Steam you would have to make it profitable for Valve. Like charge 1$ for Xonotic on steam and give this 1$ to Valve to pay for bandwith and stuff.

I don't think they are willing to place game that don't bring any money on the table on their platform.

Update, reading some of the responsing I get the following impression.

0. The author of the plugin which enables export and import for the Source Engine seems to be interested in this, they are discussing intigrating it in Blender, which might resolve in some licensing issues I would pressume.
1. Valve seems to have been discussing in private with some of the "lead"-devs of Blender (I do not know how they orginize their project), and talked about a donation system that would even bring money to Blender

Does this mean they are interested in supporting and promoting free software on their platform? The key question still remains though, how they gonna distribute it without GPL violation.

How do you think they are going to distribute it with GPL violation? If the license text is included and sources are made available through the wide range of possibilities for distribution (inclusion in package, URL to blender.org, separate source package...) everything is fine...

Anyway, this isn't about greenlight. And greenlight is about profit apparently, and as Majki points out they can't take a percentage of sales if the game is distributed freely

PS: the english language has 1-based indexing.

I was just taking a look at the forums and came across this thread. Steam would be a blessing for this game. Xonotic's a great game, but you can't deny that nobody on earth even knows about it. There's like 15 people online at any given time, and I take it those are just the devs themselves. There's a ton of free-to-play games on steam that are complete shit compared to Xonotic, yet they have a decent player base. You guys have been working on this game for quite a while now, but stuff like IRC matchmaking etc is really not going to cut it anymore in the year 2013. People prefer stuff like ingame chat and match finding.

We are not doing any official PR until we reach 1.0. We're not desperately looking for way to publicize right now. If we reach out to Valve, it won't be before then anyway.

I think it's best that this game pretty much stay underground until 1.0 due to it being in need of some polish in a few places. Namely there's a major weapons overhaul that needs to happen, and the vehicular aspect needs to be toyed with and content added there. The bot intelligence is also a major concern, though if this game had some popularity going for it a singleplayer wouldn't really be needed. In fact I think the singleplayer "campaign" should be built more as a tutorial with optional videos included with the game to teach you how to play.

I think must people here missunderstood the purpose of this thread, I should have been much clearer in first post.

As seen in other threads there have been people who want Xonotic on Steam. This thread was meant to see if Blenders experience to get on Steam can be learnt from. This was nothing about discussion about Xonotic on Steam in general, there's already threads about that.

Now, Xonotic on Steam before 1.0 is out of question, official PR before 1.0 is out of question and off-topic, and in the end it's up to the core developers to decide. This thread was meant to discuss the possibility of Xonotic to get "allowed" on Steam or however you wanna phrase it.

Mr. Bougo maybe can lock this thread or move it to WW...

We are not doing any official PR until we reach 1.0.

The more players Xonotic has, the more artists might be interested in contributing to the project. Just saying.

machine, why would I lock this thread after you set it back on its tracks? It's a fine thread.

I'm not sure what you want to learn from this, though. From my understanding, this is independant from greenlight.

Perhaps don't lock it but what about editing the original thread to add a little more info and a mod edit in bold, red, size 127 to say that the suggestion of Xonotic on Steam has come and gone many times but the licencing barriers still remain unsolved and right now are not up for discussion.

If not, this thread will just turn into another 'I want this too!' conversation.

PS: the english language has 1-based indexing.

Except for when something before point 1 gets inserted later on, the 0th law of thermodynamics is a good example. I kind of like numbering from zero and applaud Machine! for his use of it.

Sorry, I suppose that was off-topic. You should know though that even if it's not 1.0 yet, Xonotic is more fun than most of the free to play shit on Steam. Hope to see it there one day.