Nvidia Embraces Modding Community For ‘Half Life 2’ Project, Valve Apparently Cool With It
It's always nice when you get several stories in a row that contrast with one another in order to make a point. We were just discussing Rockstar's decision to scoop up a roleplaying and modding community in order to build in new and interesting ways to play GTA and Red Dead Redemption games. What I had hoped out loud would be a sign that Rockstar was turning over a new leaf on modding communities was dashed almost immediately as the company then went after another group of mod-makers for the crime of being fans of its games and trying to make them more interesting and playable. Game companies don't have to do this sort of thing.
And that is now evidenced by Nvidia's recent announcement that it has partnered with four different modding communities to push out a new graphically updated version of Half-Life 2, with Valve's silence on the announcement serving as its tacit endorsement.
Awkwardly titledHalf-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, the remaster is currently in development with no set release date. Nvidia announced it today as part of its pre-Gamescom presentations. The remaster will use RTX Remix, which is Nvidia's toolkit for bringing ray-tracing to classic PC games. RTX Remix was previously announced usingThe Elder Scrolls III: Morrowindas an example; it seeks to give community modders and hobbyists the ability to do ray-tracing conversions for old games, but it's still only available to a few people.
The people, in this case, are a group of modders from multiple community projects who have banded together under the name Orbifold Studios. The team includes modders who worked on VRHalf-Life 2projectProject 17, asset remastering projectHalf-Life 2 Remade Assets, total conversation modRaising the Bar: Redux,and another VR mod simply calledHalf-Life 2 VR, among others.
There has been no public statement I'm aware of by Valve on this project, but it has been made very clear in industry publications that the company behind the original game series has nothing to do with the actual making of this remake. That being said, the company is said to be very aware of the project. Therefore, while I'd love to see a full-throated endorsement of the modding community doing this sort of thing from Valve, its silence and a company like Nvidia's involvement sure seems to indicate that the company isn't going to disappear this whole thing.
This thing just kicked off into development, so I suppose there would still be time for Valve to reverse course, but I doubt it will, mostly because I highly doubt Nvidia would announce this at all if there was even a chance that Valve would nix the project. So why is it that Valve can see the usefulness in fan projects like this, but Rockstar can't?