Facepunch Studios founder Garry Newman has acknowledged that S&box, the studio’s spiritual successor to Garry’s Mod, has struggled since its April launch and laid out a set of major changes to the game, according to Polygon. The plans, described in a blog post titled “Rethinking,” go beyond the previously reported move to free to play.
In the post, Newman wrote that the platform has poor player retention and is not well liked. “I’m embarrassed by our reviews, I am ashamed,” he wrote. Polygon reports that the game’s Steam reviews are about 47% positive.
Newman said Facepunch had put too much of its attention on development tools and not enough on what players actually experience. “We’re not selling an engine, we’re selling a game,” he wrote.
Polygon reports that the studio now plans to concentrate on the core sandbox, adding more NPCs and vehicles and improving multiplayer, add-on support and customization. According to Newman, the goal is to match Garry’s Mod first and then surpass it.
Facepunch is also changing how players find user-made games inside S&box. Newman conceded that his idea of a “Netflix for games” with a wide catalog of community creations has not worked as planned, because a flood of low-quality projects, some of them AI-generated, has made good games harder to find. The studio will instead focus on curation and promote the best and most popular games over sheer volume. It also intends to rely more on Steam Workshop rather than keep building its own alternatives.
As GamingNews reported earlier, S&box is expected to go free to play toward the end of 2026. Newman argued that an entry fee on top of paid cosmetics may be putting off potential players. When the switch happens, current owners will receive exclusive Steam inventory items, and those who paid $20 instead of $10 will get additional items, according to Polygon.
S&box runs on Valve’s Source 2 engine. Garry’s Mod, the physics sandbox it follows, has sold more than 25 million copies, Polygon notes.
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