Game Launcher final release
We're up to 81 games in Steam Workshop now, and I expect we'll see quite a few more released before the end of the tournament. Some of the stuff this tournament especially is really good, so it's not too soon to start thinking about the final release of game launcher on Steam. At that point the application will no longer be marked "Early Preview" and will get a big increase in downloads on Steam since its visibility will be much higher.
I want to launch with at least 100 total games. This seemed like a tough task back when I first came up with this idea, but we're nearly there now. 15-20 games will be marked as a "staff pick" and be displayed with a badge recommending players try those games first. By default, those will probably be the first ones displayed when the user opens the application. Any games that aren't working at launch time will be hidden. (Fortunately, 95% of the stuff uploaded keeps working with the current build of the engine, even after a year.)
To get ready for launch, I recommend you make sure your game's window creation code is working correctly. You can copy and paste the window creation code from main.lua to make sure your game is created with the resolution the user specifies, and the right fullscreen setting.
We might or might not support VR on launch. Although these games are not built with VR in mind, it is possible to make them work with sit-down VR without any changes. On one hand that might not be a good user experience, but on the other hand some of them could be really fun and it might attract a lot of players who want to try 100 new VR experiences. We'll see.
There may be a possibility to sell your games through game launcher, using the same system that is in use right now for the Workshop Store, but I am not sure yet if this is something we will do. The first thing to do is just make sure the launcher's user experience and the games are good, get a bunch of free players, and then see what we want to do with it.
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