[LDSO] Tron 2.0 Forum

I already read about this story several days ago, but kept forgetting to mention it here.

Valve currently offers a service called the Steam Workshop. Right now, it's just for Team Fortress 2. It allows people to give away (or sell) their creations for TF2. Mostly in-game objects.

But Valve is expanding the Workshop to cover more games. It will act as a place to automatically download mods for games you own on Steam. One of the first games that will work with this new expanded service is Skyrim.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/12/01/steam ... -workshop/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Valve is one of the few companies that "gets it" when it comes to mods. Almost all the other companies are afraid of mods, and want to shut out modders. Because they fear free content will take away sales from their precious DLC revenue. Meanwhile, Valve says: not only will we allow free mods, but we'll share revenue on a few select mods that end up being sold.

So if their mod is good enough, the team that makes it will be able to earn some money from it. And Valve takes a cut on each sale. Problem solved, no? Everyone is happy. Those that want free content get it, those who want to sell get some money back for their work, and Valve doesn't have to worry about free stuff completely wiping out their chance at making money on DLC/mod content.


This is the difference between being a privately owned company, and a corporation driven by money-hungry shareholders. Valve is one of the few "big" game publishing companies left that is still private. Disney, EA, Take-Two/2K, Ubisoft . . . they're all publicly owned. Which is why they do the greedy, short-sighted things they always do.

Hmmm. Could we use this somehow to bring some attention to Tron?

Don't think so. Neither Tron 2.0, nor Tron Evolution, are on Steam. The only way to draw attention would be to make a Tron-alike game or mod.

At that point, you'd have to be careful and distance oneself from Tron as much as possible. Otherwise, you'd be opening yourself up to potential litigation from Disney for creating a Tron clone. Though Tank Universal and some other games have managed to get away with it by being different "just enough". (And good for them, too. Don't get me wrong.)

A better option for making "official" Tron content is to keep doing what we're already doing: keep it free (to avoid Disney lawsuits), keep it to Tron 2.0 (or Tron Evolution, bleh), and just use social sites to promote the heck out of them. Also, Desura is another option, which is a Steam-alike service from ModDB for mod distribution.

Maybe if Good Old Games (GOG.com) ever manages to get the rights to sell Tron 2.0, that would also be a place that promotes the free add-on content made by fans.

tronfaq wrote:A better option for making "official" Tron content is to keep doing what we're already doing: keep it free (to avoid Disney lawsuits

I'm thinking free is just as detrimental as charging since it could be perceived as taking away from Disney product sales. I suppose that would be very hard to prove though. So don't show a download count of whatever it is!

Nah, Disney doesn't care what fans do. That is abundantly clear.

Unless, whatever is created is somehow considered defamatory toward Disney or one of their properties. Then they issue marching orders to their team of lawyers. That, or if revenue is being earned and it's not them doing the earning. But even then I've seen tons of rip-off Tron merchandise being sold, and Disney hasn't done squat to stop it.

TronFAQ wrote: Also, Desura is another option, which is a Steam-alike service from ModDB for mod distribution.

I was just about to come here and tell everyone about Desura. It's an open-source version of Steam (also runs on Linux), and you can use your ModDB account to log into it. They offer free games as well as paid games, though their prices are kind of steep compared to the sales I have seen on Steam. I'd encourage everyone to give the small, free indie games available on Desura a try as a show of support to independent developers.