What to Expect from s&box, the Spiritual Successor to Garry’s Mod

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Before games like Dreams and Roblox allowed anyone to create and share, there was Garry’s Mod. This open-source platform for game development was built using Valve’s Source engine and launched in 2006. It arrived when Valve was incredibly successful, having already created hits like Half-Life 2 and just before releasing Portal, which I consider to be their best game.

Released in the mid-2000s, Garry’s Mod was incredibly innovative, giving players the tools to create their own games. This led to a huge variety of amazing creations, from adventure games and multiplayer shooters to animated films, often using characters from classic Valve games. It’s still available on Steam for around $10 and remains fun to play. However, Garry’s Mod is starting to show its age, as it was built on an older engine (Source) that has been superseded by the more modern Source 2, used in games like CS:GO 2 and Deadlock. Fortunately, Garry Newman, the creator of Garry’s Mod, is now working on s&box (pronounced “sandbox”), which represents the next evolution of this creative platform.

Newman’ studio, Facepunch Productions, is also well-known for developing Rust.

Garry’s Mod Creators Are Coming Back With s&box

I’ve always loved that Garry’s Mod isn’t really a game with set rules – it’s more like a virtual sandbox where you make the fun happen. A lot of games today, like Dreams, let you enjoy what other people build, but Garry’s Mod puts the power of creation right in your hands. It’s so easy to start – you can just spawn cars or weapons – but if you’re really ambitious, you can even write your own code to build anything you can imagine. That’s what makes Garry’s Mod so special – it’s incredibly flexible and lets you be the creator.

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s&box aims to provide a powerful, open-source foundation for creating complete games. However, Facepunch, the developers, haven’t called it a “sequel.” They see it as a spiritual successor – or even something entirely new. Here’s how the official s&box blog describes the project:

s&box isn’t simply an updated version of Garry’s Mod. We’re aiming to go far beyond what was previously achievable, not just refresh the old. We’re leveraging the power of Source 2 and combining it with everything we’ve learned from Source 1, Garry’s Mod, Unity, and Unreal Engine to build a user-friendly, customizable game development environment. Like Rust and Garry’s Mod, s&box is a project we plan to develop and refine for many years to come – it’s the platform we want to use ourselves for decades.

It’s natural for Facepunch to present their new game, s&box, as a major improvement over Garry’s Mod, but there’s substance behind the hype. Everything we’ve seen so far supports their claims. What really stands out is that s&box seems to have learned from popular engines like Unity and Unreal Engine. The editor is much more user-friendly and intuitive, clearly inspired by those tools. The switch from Lua to C# is also important. C# is easier to learn, widely used in modern game development, and familiar to anyone who knows other C-based languages. This could attract a lot more developers to the s&box platform.

You’ll Be Able to Make Money on s&box

A key feature – and potential challenge – of s&box is how creators will earn money. Developers who make games on the platform will receive a portion of a daily fund, determined by how many hours players spend in their games. While Facepunch hasn’t revealed the exact details of how this works, it’s similar to platforms like YouTube, where creators earn money based on the popularity of their content.

The way s&box lets creators earn money could really help keep both creators and players involved for years to come. It might even allow developers to earn a good income from the platform, similar to what many YouTubers do. While other game-making tools like Roblox offer similar earning options, s&box‘s technology is much more advanced. With a steady income, developers could potentially build detailed and complex games within s&box that rival full, commercially released titles.

Right now, this is just a concept, and it’s hard to say how well it will actually work until we see it in practice. However, the idea behind s&box – a game creation platform that combines the freedom of Garry’s Mod with modern development tools – is really exciting. I’m hoping it does well when it launches on April 28th.

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2026-04-12 21:37