Facepunch Studios is launching S&box on Steam on April 28, and the studio behind Garry's Mod is coming in with a clear message: this platform is built to last, not to impress shareholders.
Here's the lowdown. S&box is a game creation platform built on Valve's Source 2 engine, positioning itself as a community-first alternative to Roblox and Fortnite's creator economy. Players can build games, publish them, and now earn real money from them. The platform has already been in a developer preview phase, and some of the games built inside it are already preparing for their own individual Steam launches.
What the creator payout actually looks like
Facepunch has already paid out $500,000 to developers building inside S&box. The studio is upfront that this figure isn't as large as what bigger platforms advertise, but frames it as something more valuable: sustainable. "Developers should get paid for their games, so that's what we're doing," the official press release states. "This isn't as extreme as others but it'll grow and is sustainable, since we don't have to fire 1000 people to keep it working."
That last line is not subtle, and it wasn't meant to be.
Facepunch previously partnered with Valve to allow games made in S&box to be sold royalty-free on Steam, meaning creators keep more of what they earn from standalone releases.
The dig is almost certainly aimed at Epic Games, which laid off over 1,000 employees after a downturn in Fortnite engagement. For a studio the size of Facepunch to call that out directly in a press release takes a certain confidence, but the studio has earned it. Garry's Mod has sold around 25 million copies since launching as a Source engine sandbox toy, and Rust remains one of the most-played survival games on Steam. These are not people guessing at what a community wants.
Facepunch's bet on keeping it small and honest
"We're not guided by commercial milestones, we're not going to do an IPO," the press release reads. "We do this because we love it, we want to give the community the same opportunities we've had. We want to do that as fair and generously as possible. Without any corporate mischief."
Garry Newman, CEO of Facepunch, echoed that in his own statement: "We're trying to give people the same chances that we've had... we do everything not for ourselves, but for the community."
The key here is that Facepunch's history actually backs this up. Garry's Mod started as a free mod before becoming one of Steam's most iconic releases. The studio has never chased trends or pivoted to chase engagement numbers. S&box is being positioned as the next chapter of that same philosophy, giving a new generation of creators the same kind of low-barrier entry point that the original Garry's Mod gave to modders in the mid-2000s.
What this means for people who want to build
For creators, the picture looks like this:
- Games built in S&box can be sold as standalone titles on Steam, royalty-free, thanks to the existing deal between Facepunch and Valve
- Creators who keep their games within the S&box ecosystem can still earn through the platform's payout program
- The studio has committed to growing that payout pool over time
The comparison to Roblox is worth sitting with for a moment. Roblox has faced sustained criticism over how little of its revenue actually reaches the developers who build its content. S&box is positioning itself as the opposite of that model, though the $500,000 total payout figure suggests the platform is still early in building that economy.
S&box launches on Steam on April 28. For anyone who spent their teenage years building contraptions in Garry's Mod and wondered what came next, this is probably worth watching. You can check our latest gaming news to stay across everything else dropping this week, and check out our latest reviews if you're looking for something to play while you wait for launch day.
