Steam just destroyed scalpers

Valve just handed independent developers a royalty-free commercial license to Source 2 — the engine they've kept locked behind closed doors for a decade — and let Garry Newman distribute it to every indie dev who wants it starting April 2026. While Unity was busy proposing per-install fees and Epic was quietly collecting five percent of your revenue past the first million, Facepunch spent years negotiating "reassurances and compromises" with Valve to build a pipeline where small studios can ship standalone games on Steam and owe absolutely nobody a cut. The first game is already on Steam. The code is MIT licensed on GitHub. And the end-user license is still being finalized by lawyers — which is the one sentence in this entire story that should make you pause before quitting your job. In this video, I break down the full licensing chain from Valve to Facepunch to you and why zero royalties is actually unprecedented, why the Unity Runtime Fee disaster makes this story hit different, how the monetization model structurally avoids everything wrong with Roblox, the "Facepunchified" Source 2 architecture and what hotloading actually means for solo developers, why Garry Newman open-sourced the finances and what that signals, the playtime-based internal monetization system and how it funds itself without paywalling mods, the conditions Valve required that we still don't fully know, and why My Summer Cottage is the most important indie game announcement nobody is talking about. #Valve #Steam #Lawsuit #GamingNews #PCGaming #SteamMonopoly #ValveLawsuit #UKCourt #DigitalDistribution #GamingIndustry valve news, steam news, valve lawsuit, steam lawsuit UK, valve loses appeal, steam monopoly lawsuit, UK competition appeal tribunal, valve anti-competitive, steam overcharging, platform parity obligations, valve £656 million, steam class action, vicki shotbolt valve, valve vs UK, steam legal battle, valve anti-trust, steam pricing lawsuit, digital distribution lawsuit, valve dominance, steam UK users, valve court case, steam competition law, valve loses court case, pc gaming lawsuit, steam monopoly claims, valve legal news, gaming industry lawsuit, steam anti-competitive practices, valve uk lawsuit, digital storefront lawsuit, steam drm lawsuit, valve vs lawyers, gaming news 2025, steam controversy, valve controversy, pc gaming news, steam court ruling, valve appeal denied, steam lawsuit update, gaming legal battle, valve loses case, steam epic comparison, platform fees lawsuit, 30 percent cut lawsuit, steam dlc lawsuit, valve gaming monopoly, spawn wave, gaben news, steam deck news, valve corporation lawsuit