The creator of Mod Garry says they are "ashamed" and "embarrassed" by the response to their latest project: "I let everyone down"

s&box is in a bit of a pickle, but Newman plans to change the game

Facepunch Garry Newman Garry's Mod s&box Steam

Garry Newman, creator of the bajillion-selling game Garry's Mod, doesn't hold back when it comes to his studio's latest release. The ominously named s&box (sandbox, see?) was intended to be the spiritual sequel to Garry's Mod, the 2008 mod for Valve's Source engine that sold over 25 million copies. Built for Source 2, s&box Facepunch was released in April of this year and was immediately inundated with terrible AI reviews.

Efforts were quickly made to counter the user-generated AI drive that had swamped the project, but unfortunately, Newman—rarely on the right side of an argument—continued that he didn't want to ban AI entirely because "it's a good learning tool and it's a good productivity tool." But these tweaks weren't enough to change initial sentiment about the open-source project, which remains at just 47 percent positive reviews on Steam.

The number of players has been terrible. While the 20-year-old Garry’s Mod still sees roughly 30,000 people playing simultaneously every day, s&box barely scratches 500, despite estimates of sales between 500,000 and one million. Recently, Face Punch tried to bring a few more players, dads&box (which hurts me every time I type) a free weekend on Steam, and as IXBT Games found out, it caused Newman to hate the project for the first time, which was covered by a YouTube video of disastrous advertising.

"The throw was a dud," Newman said. "The free weekend was bullshit." Blaming its failure to float under the radar on "burnt bridges" (your guess is as good as mine), he added: "We can't get away with it, we screwed it up. We weren't ready and we screwed it up. We know, you know we screwed it up."

These comments have now been followed up by a blog on the game's official site that condemns pretty much everything about s&box.

"I've been thinking about what s&box should look like for the past few weeks," Newman writes. This platform is not well liked, not well maintained. I am ashamed of our reviews, I am ashamed. Listening to all the negative feedback, absorbing it, taking it seriously and deciding what to do and what not to do. It's no big secret that it wasn't going well."

The project manager goes on to state that the main mistake was selling s&box as an "engine and development experience", forgetting that the people buying it are more interested in gaming. The plan is simply stated, and Newman claims it's "relatively easy work":

Part of this focus is our attention to the Sandbox game. Equal to and surpassing the Garry's Mod version. It shows everyone what the engine can do, and adds more NPCs, adding vehicles, providing a first-class multiplayer experience, supporting plugins and customization. This is a relatively easy task - but I disappointed everyone who expected it. I accept that and I'm sorry - we'll get better.

"My idea of Netflix for games doesn't work," concludes Newman, acknowledging that the AI gradient still makes it hard for people to find interesting games to download and play in sandboxes. This is not possible. "It's not like people are discovering games." The goal now is to move away from a vast menu of confusing choices, and instead let curation bring the best ideas to the fore. As Newman says, "Where good taste and great opinions are valued above all else. It's a very human thing, it's not something that can ever be replaced by artificial intelligence."

The article then goes on to explain that Facepunch's own backend development has been "largely a waste of time and resources" and instead plans to move everything to the Steam Workshop, which was already there and already provided the same services.

And finally, the game will go from $10 to "free to play" before the end of the year. It's mentioned that we get paid for access and also have skins for sale. I don't think it's too unusual these days, but I can totally understand how it blends in with everything else which is a huge turn off. We don't need entry fees, we need players. Those who have already paid will receive "a collection of exclusive Steam inventory items ... which I hope will justify the purchase price."

I love seeing people create things, I love this engine and I love working on it. Negative reviews hurt me. The disparagement of the project bothers me. I don't like to let people down, especially when they are paying me to provide services. I understand all of this and we are making some sweeping, sweeping changes to try to improve things. Please stay tuned as we make these changes.

It's absolutely fantastic, and it will be interesting if there's anything that can change the fortunes of s&box at this point, after a terrible launch and surprisingly high player count.

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