Facepunch Studios plans to make s&box, its Source 2 creation platform and spiritual successor to Garry’s Mod, free-to-play toward the end of 2026. Studio founder Garry Newman announced the change in a candid Oct. 13 post on the s&box site titled “Rethinking,” in which he says the project hasn’t worked the way Facepunch hoped.
“The platform is not well liked, it doesn’t have good retention,” Newman writes. “I’m embarrassed by our reviews, I am ashamed.”
The numbers back him up. When RCG checked the Steam store page Wednesday afternoon, 47% of 3,694 user reviews for s&box were positive, and only 40% of the 342 reviews posted in the last 30 days were. Garry’s Mod, by comparison, holds a 97% positive score from more than 541,000 ratings, PCGamesN notes.
Dropping the entry fee
Newman says players have pointed out that s&box charges for access while also selling skins. “We don’t need the entrance fee, we need players,” he writes. The plan was always to go free-to-play eventually, he adds, so Facepunch is doing it now.
No specific date has been set beyond “towards the end of the year.” Everyone who has already paid will automatically get a set of exclusive Steam inventory items, with extra items for people who bought in at $20 rather than $10. The game currently sells for $9.99 on Steam.
More game, less engine
The bigger shift is one of focus. “Our focus has been on the engine and the development experience,” Newman writes. “That’s what we love, that’s what turns us on – but we’re not selling an engine, we’re selling a game.” Facepunch now wants its Sandbox game mode to reach parity with Garry’s Mod and then surpass it, with more NPCs, vehicles, a stronger multiplayer experience and addon support.
Other changes are already rolling out:
- The Citizen is gone. The stylized default character has been pulled from the menu and avatar customization in favor of human models. Newman says the team “tried to make it work for about a year longer than we should have.”
- Discovery is moving to Steam Workshop. Newman calls Facepunch’s custom backend “mostly a waste of time and resources.” Maps are now published to the Workshop first. “My idea of a Netflix for games doesn’t work,” he writes.
- The Play Fund now requires approval. Creators must apply, and Facepunch says it wants to discourage clickers, idlers, slop and UI-based games. It has already removed games and maps that fall short of the new bar.
- Performance and downloads are getting attention. The post concedes s&box has “consistently failed to meet a stable frame rate on lower end hardware.” The update also speeds up startup and shrinks downloads for the most-played games and maps.
Newman closes on a personal note. “The negative reviews hurt me. The disdain for the project hurts me,” he writes. “Please bear with us while we make these changes.”
