I'm just wondering everyone's thoughts on this. I believe that we've been told in the past that third party mods, that had any degree of popularity whatsoever, would be eligible to be updated with patches/new releases through Steam itself, much like Counterstrike and other multiplayer games update now.
Of course, the folks at Valve are at hard work giving the finishing touches to Half Life 2, CounterStrike: Source, Half Life: Source, eventually DOD: Source, and all of the things that go along with releasing new products. So the question isn't when (it wouldn't matter much even if Valve didn't allow this feature for many weeks after HL2 was out), the question is if.
If you look at the latest statistics: http://steampowered.com/status/status.html , it now appears that with the Half-Life 2 preliminary preload, almost all of Valve's network bandwith it taken. This limits other games from being updated - if, for example, Valve wanted to push out a big CS: Source bug update, the Steam servers would probably overload. Thus, the Steam servers have a very real bandwith limit, which is very evident when large files are available for download.
Recently, Valve has added a section within Steam for curious gamers to check out the mod scene, with links to their sites and the like. This is a very cool first step, but the question still remains: will Valve add support for direct mod (and their patches) downloading? Though Valve can increase Steam's bandwith, it is very expensive. We'll have to see if Valve is willing to deal with that.
Your thoughts?
Of course, the folks at Valve are at hard work giving the finishing touches to Half Life 2, CounterStrike: Source, Half Life: Source, eventually DOD: Source, and all of the things that go along with releasing new products. So the question isn't when (it wouldn't matter much even if Valve didn't allow this feature for many weeks after HL2 was out), the question is if.
If you look at the latest statistics: http://steampowered.com/status/status.html , it now appears that with the Half-Life 2 preliminary preload, almost all of Valve's network bandwith it taken. This limits other games from being updated - if, for example, Valve wanted to push out a big CS: Source bug update, the Steam servers would probably overload. Thus, the Steam servers have a very real bandwith limit, which is very evident when large files are available for download.
Recently, Valve has added a section within Steam for curious gamers to check out the mod scene, with links to their sites and the like. This is a very cool first step, but the question still remains: will Valve add support for direct mod (and their patches) downloading? Though Valve can increase Steam's bandwith, it is very expensive. We'll have to see if Valve is willing to deal with that.
Your thoughts?
