{"id":555721,"date":"2026-04-28T21:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T21:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/555721\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T21:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T21:26:09","slug":"eventually-the-slop-will-just-fall-to-the-bottom-garrys-mod-sequel-launches-to-mixed-reviews-but-garry-himself-isnt-worried-about-ai-games-on-the-main-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/555721\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Eventually the slop will just fall to the bottom&#8217;: Garry&#8217;s Mod sequel launches to &#8216;mixed&#8217; reviews, but Garry himself isn&#8217;t worried about AI games on the main page"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"elk-f7ded081-ddef-42e0-8319-ebc8d1f4a619\">Today saw the release of s&amp;box, the long-in-development successor to Garry&#8217;s mod that&#8217;s also open source and hopes to become a kind of Roblox for dads. There&#8217;s no denying the potential of this toolkit, nor the commendably generous principles behind why it&#8217;s been released in the way it has, but it does have one immediate issue. And it&#8217;s 2026, so of course that issue is AI-generated slop.<\/p>\n<p>S&amp;box&#8217;s Steam reviews are, at the time of writing, decidedly &#8220;mixed&#8221;, with the vast majority of negative reviews referencing AI in some respect. I&#8217;ve just downloaded the game-slash-platform to have a look and, on the landing page where you can view what&#8217;s on offer, a lot of the games being offered do look like they&#8217;ve been tossed together quickly using such tools, and have the negative ratings to match. I also don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve ever come across a more intriguing game name, in both a good and bad way, than &#8220;Terry&#8217;s Granny (Now with Co-op!)&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"elk-seasonal\"\/><\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-f7ded081-ddef-42e0-8319-ebc8d1f4a619-2\" class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">I will note that there are roughly as many positive reviews, but here&#8217;s a brief selection from the <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/app\/590830\/sbox\/#app_reviews_hash\" target=\"_blank\" data-url=\"https:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/app\/590830\/sbox\/#app_reviews_hash\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"inline-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">negative Steam reviews<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>Article continues below <\/p>\n<p>            You may like<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">Stiles: &#8220;At release there is like 90% AI generated slop which is silently accepted by Facepunch. So you can expect that this platform will be full of AI-generated slop, and Facepunch gladly pays them for doing no work and committing theft.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">Babouche: &#8220;You will get more fun on transformice than this game full of &#8216;AI slop&#8217; and money farm game like on roblox and fortnite.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">SomeGhoosName: &#8220;It&#8217;s an unoptimized mess with a &#8216;game hub&#8217; filled with &#8216;vibe coded&#8217; AI slop, not to mention that the developers themselves support AI in their official discord.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">Archupump: &#8220;Filled with AI slop and low-effort gambling simulators. If that is something you are interested in, this is your place.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"newsletter-form__strapline\">Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">Mado: &#8220;Filled to the brim with low quality, asset flip, braindead AI slop which facepunch seems to blindly accept.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">I could go on, but you get the idea. Developer Facepunch admits they&#8217;ll &#8220;have to deal with people using AI in obvious, low quality ways&#8221; though that&#8217;s clearly a work-in-progress. The studio&#8217;s founder Garry Newman acknowledges that s&amp;box &#8220;isn&#8217;t perfect&#8221; and says the goal from hereon-in is a weekly cadence of updates with close attention paid to player feedback.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&#8220;Low quality, obvious AI-created slop is going to be a growing problem in every creative outlet,&#8221; <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/garrys-mod-sequel-sbox-is-already-having-to-deal-with-people-using-ai-in-obvious-low-quality-ways-confess-developers-facepunch\" target=\"_blank\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/garrys-mod-sequel-sbox-is-already-having-to-deal-with-people-using-ai-in-obvious-low-quality-ways-confess-developers-facepunch\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"inline-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Newman told RPS<\/a>. &#8220;We don&#8217;t encourage using AI to be creative. We don&#8217;t encourage using AI to create games for you. But we do acknowledge that it&#8217;s a good learning tool and it&#8217;s a good productivity tool. We&#8217;ll be taking action to promote human creativity and push obviously AI-created slop off the main page.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>            What to read next<\/p>\n<p class=\"vanilla-image-block\" style=\"padding-top:56.25%;\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GHgZhSYihHYXysUesRFJNV.jpg\" alt=\"Some silly helicopters and cars chasing each other\"   loading=\"lazy\" data-new-v2-image=\"true\" data-original-mos=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GHgZhSYihHYXysUesRFJNV.jpg\" data-pin-media=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GHgZhSYihHYXysUesRFJNV.jpg\" class=\"rounded-[var(--image--border-radius,0)] inline\"\/>\n<\/p>\n<p>(Image credit: Facepunch Studios)<\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-7985420f-6d5f-431f-96c2-daee5522c559\">PC Gamer&#8217;s Chris Livingston sat down with Newman recently at GDC, and the issues of moderation and AI came up. Do bear in mind that Newman was talking shortly before s&amp;box was released into the wild.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You expect the community to flag it up, basically, with a lot of these systems that don&#8217;t exist yet, because we&#8217;re not released yet,&#8221; said Newman. &#8220;My general thing with moderation is you want something to moderate before you create a system to moderate it. So we want people to break the rules, and then we&#8217;ll notice, and then we&#8217;ll create a system, and you can apply that retroactively, and you can find the right system for it then: which might be AI, it might be manual review. There&#8217;s a lot of options nowadays.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As for Facepunch&#8217;s general stance on AI, Newman said it&#8217;s a no-brainer that people are going to use it and praises the technology in some respects, while acknowledging the &#8216;slop&#8217; problem.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t mind AI that much, because it makes my job so much easier, but I know a lot of artists are more sensitive over AI,&#8221; said Newman. &#8220;I think programmers are over it now. They&#8217;ve seen how useful it is, how more efficient it makes them. My thoughts on AI with programming are basically the same as porn.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hold up, let him cook.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So like if you use too much porn, you lose your ability to ejaculate using your imagination,&#8221; <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/software\/ai\/garrys-mod-creator-says-programmers-over-relying-on-ai-is-like-using-too-much-porn-you-lose-your-ability-to-ejaculate-using-your-imagination\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/software\/ai\/garrys-mod-creator-says-programmers-over-relying-on-ai-is-like-using-too-much-porn-you-lose-your-ability-to-ejaculate-using-your-imagination\/\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"inline-link\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/software\/ai\/garrys-mod-creator-says-programmers-over-relying-on-ai-is-like-using-too-much-porn-you-lose-your-ability-to-ejaculate-using-your-imagination\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">said Newman<\/a>. &#8220;Yeah I think you need to kind of split it 50\/50: you need to use your imagination sometimes to be able to do that. I think it&#8217;s the same with coding. If you count on AI to always do it, then you&#8217;re going to lose the ability to think critically and do [it yourself]. But I think I&#8217;ve learned more from AI than I&#8217;ve outsourced to it, it&#8217;s taught me techniques and new things that are way better than anything I&#8217;ve ever come up with on the web or search.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As for whether Facepunch has a codified policy on AI, Newman said the studio uses it in &#8220;early pre-production stuff&#8221; but he&#8217;s sensitive as to why artists will feel very differently to coders about it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My policy on AI in s&amp;box is I think eventually the slop will just fall to the bottom,&#8221; said Newman. &#8220;Nobody will be interested, because they&#8217;ll see [through it], but also it&#8217;s evolving that fast we can&#8217;t really ignore it, and we can&#8217;t say don&#8217;t use AI, because we use AI in our coding all the time. It&#8217;s useful, it&#8217;s fast. But for art it&#8217;s kind of a hot topic, for our artists it&#8217;s a really hot topic. And I can see the point when it&#8217;s been trained on their work.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Newman says the use of AI at Facepunch on the artistic side is more of &#8220;a replacement for Google Images&#8221; than anything which will find its way into the final product, and sees s&amp;box following a similar trajectory to gmod.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In Garry&#8217;s Mod we didn&#8217;t approach it with a plan in mind to make it better, but we knew that while we were making it we&#8217;d naturally spot the mistakes that we made,&#8221; laughs Newman. &#8220;Well that I made in Garry&#8217;s mod, and fix them along the way. And that&#8217;s kind of what we&#8217;ve been doing [in s&amp;box].&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/app\/590830\/sbox\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-url=\"https:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/app\/590830\/sbox\/\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"inline-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">S&amp;box is available now on Steam<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"elk-collectionwidget-badf16e90e57bc03702d9ad2d81c6ec5\" class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><a id=\"elk-15c4a460-3f7c-4bba-bda9-9166bea6cf20\" class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today saw the release of s&amp;box, the long-in-development successor to Garry&#8217;s mod that&#8217;s also open source and hopes&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-555721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}