"My Netflix Idea Doesn't Work for Games": Mod Garry's Successor Gets "Sweeping Changes"

"Sorry — we will do better."

"Sorry - we'll get better."

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More substantial changes beyond character gratification are coming in the Garry's Mod successor box. The April launch of the studio's game creation platform Facepunch was met with a barrage of negative reviews, complaints that the artificial intelligence of the user-generated game collection was skewed, and a rapid decline in user numbers.

Now creator Gary Newman is reversing course on some of his decisions, such as pivoting to a "green light-type system" for user-generated games and announcing that the platform will go free much sooner than expected.

"Our focus has been on the engine and the development experience. It's what we love, it's what turns us on — but we're not selling an engine, we're selling a game," Newman wrote this week. "So we need to do a lot better on the game, we need to shift our focus to what the players experience, not the developers."

Newman said the focus will be on improving the sandbox mode for players by adding NPCs, vehicles and more customization. "I let everyone down who expected that. I accept that and I'm sorry - we'll get better," he said.

Another issue that Newman addressed is that it makes it easier for players to make quality games among the "bulk of crap," and I quote. Facepunch has allowed creators to upload to s&box.

Gary Newman responds to s&box criticism in a lengthy YouTube comment: "I don't like to give things up, I'm stubborn".

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"The player is overwhelmed with choice," he said. "They pick a game, it takes a while to download, and it immediately crashes. How many times do they try games until they find the one they like?

"My idea of Netflix doesn't work for games. It is not possible that people discover games. You can't put people in a menu of 60 games and say "have fun".

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Game developers who want to participate in the Play Fund pool must now apply for the program, rather than having money automatically paid out to the games with the most maps and players. "Our new policy isn't very specific, but in general we want to prevent clickers. Idler, slop, and UI-based games," Newman said.

s&box will also be free before the end of 2026: "Anyone who paid for the game will automatically get a bunch of Steam-exclusive inventory items ($20 vs. $10 extra if you bought it) that I hope will justify the purchase price," Newman said.

And finally, the sausage character model known as "Citizen" or "Terry" (seen at the top of this page) has been retired in favor of generic human characters. "This mod is still in the game, so games that use it will continue to use it, but it's no longer visible in the menu or avatar editor."

Will these changes be enough to save s&box? It's hard to say, but it certainly seems like a wise adjustment for humans to avoid the slope and be less hopeful that "the slope will fall down," as Newman told me in April. The s&box definitely needs something: when Morgan played it at launch, it felt like it contained very little of the spirit of the original G-Mod. We hope these changes are helpful.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. After a few years as a casual freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he wouldn't email them asking for more. Chris' work has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of unexpected simulation games, mods, and skipping stories in RPGs in order to create his own story.

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