Half-Life 2 engine licensed for MMORPG

The Half-Life 2 engine, referred to as the Source engine, has found a new home. The engine's creator, Valve, said today that it had licensed the Source engine to Florida-based start-up Smiling Gator Productions. Smiling Gator will use the engine in its upcoming massively multiplayer role-playing game, Twilight War: After the Fall.

The announcement makes Smiling Gator only the third company to license the engine. Troika Games is building its upcoming title, Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines, on top of the Source engine, and Arkane Studios, developers of 2003's Xbox RPG, Arx Fatalis, has also licensed the engine for an upcoming title.

Smiling Gator calls Twilight War "an MMORPG with an integrated First-Person Shooter-style combat system where thousands of online players come together in an expansive and immersive three-dimensional world."