{"id":882098,"date":"2026-10-14T14:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T14:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/882098\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T14:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T14:56:10","slug":"garrys-mod-creator-says-hes-ashamed-and-embarrassed-by-the-response-to-his-latest-project-ive-let-everybody-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/882098\/","title":{"rendered":"Garry’s Mod Creator Says He’s ‘Ashamed’ And ‘Embarrassed’ By The Response To His Latest Project: ‘I’ve Let Everybody Down’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Garry Newman, the creator of the bajillion-selling\u00a0Garry\u2019s Mod, has not held back when reflecting on his studio\u2019s latest release. The atrociously-named\u00a0s&box (sandbox, see?) was intended to be the spiritual sequel to\u00a0Garry\u2019s Mod, the 2008 mod for Valve\u2019s Source engine that went on to sell over 25 million copies. Built for Source 2, Facepunch\u2019s s&box was released in April of this year, and was immediately drowned in AI slop and terrible reviews<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Efforts were quickly made to try to fight back against the user-generated AI drivel<\/a> that was inundating the project, but unfortunately Newman\u2014who is rarely one to find the right side of an argument<\/a>\u2014went on to add that he didn\u2019t want to ban AI entirely because it\u2019s \u201ca good learning tool and it\u2019s a good productivity tool.\u201d But these adjustments weren\u2019t enough to turn around early feeling about the open source project, which remains stuck on just 47 percent positive reviews on Steam.<\/p>\n

Player numbers have been atrocious. While the 20-year-old\u00a0Garry\u2019s Mod continues to see almost 30,000 people playing simultaneously every day,\u00a0s&box barely scrapes 500, despite estimates of anywhere between 500,000 and a million sales.\u00a0Recently, in an attempt to bring in some more players, Facepunch gave s&box (which hurts me to type each time) a free weekend on Steam, and as\u00a0IXBT Games<\/a> noticed, this led to Newman\u2019s first outpouring of loathing for the project under a YouTube video\u2019s coverage<\/a> of the disastrous promotion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe launch was shit,\u201d said Newman. \u201cThe free weekend was shit.\u201d Blaming its failure to float under the radar for \u201cburnt bridges\u201d (your guess is as good as mine), he added, \u201cWe can\u2019t get away from that, we fucked it. We weren\u2019t ready and we fucked it. We know that, you know that, we fucked it.\u201d<\/p>\n

These comments have now been followed up by a blog entry on the game\u2019s official site<\/a> which condemns just about everything about\u00a0s&box.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been rethinking what s&box should look like over the past couple of weeks,\u201d Newman writes. \u201cThe platform is not well liked, it doesn\u2019t have good retention. I\u2019m embarrassed by our reviews, I am ashamed. Listening to all the negative feedback, absorbing, taking it seriously and deciding what we should and shouldn\u2019t be doing. It\u2019s not a big secret that it hasn\u2019t been going well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The project lead goes on to state that the core mistake has been selling\u00a0s&box as an \u201cengine and development experience,\u201d forgetting that the people buying it are far more interested in\u00a0playing. Newman writes:<\/p>\n

\u2026We need to do much much better on the game, we need to shift our focus to what players are experiencing, not developers.\u00a0Part of this focus is drawing our attention to the Sandbox Game. Giving it parity with the Garry\u2019s Mod version and surpassing it. Showing everyone what the engine can do, adding more NPCs, adding vehicles, offering a first class multiplayer experience, supporting addons and customization. This is a relatively easy task \u2013 but I\u2019ve let everyone down that was expecting that. I accept that, and I\u2019m sorry \u2013 we are going to do better.<\/p>\n

Acknowledging that AI slop is still making it hard for people to find interesting games to download and play within the sandbox, Newman says, \u201cMy idea of a Netflix for games doesn\u2019t work. It\u2019s not feasible. It\u2019s not how people discover games.\u201d The intention now is to move away from a sprawling menu of confusing choices, and instead to allow curation to float the best ideas to the top. As Newman puts it, \u201cWhere good taste and great opinions are valued beyond everything else. This is a very human thing, this isn\u2019t something that can be replaced by AI, ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

The article then goes on to say that the development of Facepunch\u2019s own backend has \u201cmostly been a waste of time and resources,\u201d and he instead intends to shift everything over to the Steam Workshop that was already there, already offering the same service.<\/p>\n

And finally, the game is going from $10 to \u201cfree to play\u201d before the end of the year. \u201cIt\u2019s been pointed out that we are charging for access and also have skins for sale. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s too unusual nowadays, but I can totally understand how combined with everything else that it\u2019s a big turn off. We don\u2019t need the entrance fee, we need players.\u201d Those who already paid will get \u201ca bunch of exclusive steam inventory items\u2026that I hope will justify the purchase price.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newman concludes,<\/p>\n

I love seeing people create things, I love this engine, and I love working on it. The negative reviews hurt me. The disdain for the project hurts me. I don\u2019t like letting people down, especially when they\u2019ve given me money to provide a service. I understand it all and we\u2019re making some big sweeping changes to try to improve things. Please bear with us while we make these changes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s quite the extraordinary\u00a0mea culpa, and it\u2019ll be interesting if there\u2019s anything that can turn around the fate of\u00a0s&box at this stage, after such a terrible launch and bewilderingly small player numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Garry Newman, the creator of the bajillion-selling\u00a0Garry\u2019s Mod, has not held back when reflecting on his studio\u2019s latest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":882099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[370410,370411,370412,370413,2646,74],"class_list":["post-882098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-facepunch","tag-garry-newman","tag-garrys-mod","tag-sbox","tag-steam","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/882099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}