Source 2 has been announced by Valve; a successor to the aging Source Engine that powered Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2 in 2004. Source 2 will be "available for free to content developers", according to Valve's Jay Stelly. He continued to say:
"This combined with recent announcements by Epic and Unity will help continue the PCs dominance as the premiere content authoring platform."
- Jay Stelly, Valve
I would assume however that when they say "free" they mean free for the modding community. If you are a developer then you will most likely have to pay royalties to Valve for using and selling a product that utilizes their engine, which is only fair to be honest.
"With Source 2, our focus is increasing creator productivity, given how important user generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not just for the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favourite games."
- Jay Stelly, Valve
Valve also announced a Vulkan-compatible version of the engine; formerly known as Next Generation OpenGL. Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics API. Support for Vulkan is a priority for Valve as they want PC Gaming to come away from Microsoft's DirectX and onto Linux. Vulkan will also greatly increase performance by removing existing overhead problems.
The original Source Engine also uses Havok as it's physics engine. With Source 2, Valve have developed their own physics engine known as Rubikon. Exciting as it is, it may affect one of their leading games: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The reason being is that if the physics change in any way, it could take a sidestep in how the game plays. For example, players may have to relearn how to throw grenades so that they can execute tactics that include the use of a smoke grenade or frag grenade.
No release date or explicit details about how the financing works have been released as of yet. But it does tell for an exciting future for PC Gaming.
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