It's a recent requirement Valve introduced a few years ago called
"Community Mod" program. Somehow Neotokyo mod avoided getting lumped
into the mess everyone else has been forced into. It's really sad too,
in the first few months when our mod (Modular Combat) was available on
Steam we had a massive number of players. Around 4000 unique players per
month spread across 12 servers (located around the world) that were full
24/7 and this was despite servers crashing every 5 minutes due to a
serious bug. Around 8 months later when Valve instated the Community
Mod's program and made Half-Life 2 a requirement, player counts dropped
dramatically to around 99% less players. It would be a fluke if a
server would have more than 6 players.
http://store.steampowered.com/about/communitymods/
With what Valve is earning from Steam alone, the income generated by
sales of Half-Life 2 is a needle in a haystack. and since most players
don't have Half-Life 2; all that work mod makers put into their games is
pretty much a waste. What would likely work better, some type of
advertisement system built into the engine that announces steam sales.
That would generate Valve way more sales while still allowing anyone to
play mods.
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