s&box to go free-to-play late this year, Garry Newman says

s&box, Facepunch Studios’ successor to Garry’s Mod, is changing course. In a 13 October post on the official s&box site, Garry Newman said the platform “is not well liked” and has weak retention, and laid out a list of changes, from dropping the entry fee to curating which games get paid.

Free-to-play later in 2026

The biggest change for players is the price. Newman said s&box will drop its price and become free-to-play late this year. He gave no exact date. Charging for access while also selling skins put people off, he wrote, and the plan was always to drop the fee at some point, so the studio is bringing that forward.

“We don’t need the entrance fee, we need players,” Newman wrote.

People who already bought s&box will get a set of exclusive Steam inventory items automatically. Those who paid $20 rather than $10 will receive extra items.

Play Fund becomes an application system

The Play Fund, which shares money with the makers of popular games and maps, no longer lets anyone enrol. Creators now have to apply and be accepted, which Newman calls a greenlight-style system. He said the old setup pushed people towards the wrong kinds of games and rewarded botting.

Facepunch wants fewer clicker, idle, slop and UI-based games and has already pulled a number of games and maps out of the fund that it felt fell short. Newman said the rules are not final.

He also tied the change to discovery. With AI making it quick to build a game, players face a few good games among many poor ones, he wrote, and his idea of a “Netflix for games” did not work. In his view, players discover games by word of mouth, lively multiplayer sessions and streamers, not by browsing a huge catalogue.

The Citizen is retired

The Citizen avatar, nicknamed Terry as PC Gamer notes, is no longer shown in the main menu or the avatar editor. Human models are now the default everywhere. Games that already use the Citizen keep working, because the model stays in the game files. Facepunch says the human models got new animations, LODs, climbing animations and an eye colour option in this update.

Engine work takes a back seat to the Sandbox Game

Newman said the team had focused on the engine and tools for developers when it is selling a game. The Sandbox Game is next in line: Facepunch wants it to match the Garry’s Mod version and then go further, with more NPCs, vehicles, better multiplayer, addon support and customization.

The studio is also moving away from its own workshop backend. Maps published from s&box now go to the Steam Workshop as well, and Facepunch asked mappers to publish there soon, since players will lose access to maps that aren’t on the Workshop once the full switch happens.

Smaller downloads and other fixes

The same post lists a long run of technical changes:

• Downloads: leaner asset builds shrink the 50 most played games from 46.3 GB to 36.3 GB combined and the top 50 maps from 47.4 GB to 35.6 GB, once creators recompile and republish. A cloud texture streaming test cuts the first download by 63% for those games and 82% for those maps.
• Startup: about 60% faster in one developer’s test, with a splash screen shown earlier.
• Performance: a single performance window (F11) replaces about 10 separate overlays, and ambient occlusion costs less than half as much as before.
• Networking: private lobbies now use the engine’s own access checks, and at 30 Hz on a stable connection other players lag 71 ms behind instead of 133 ms.

Context

PC Gamer notes that s&box launched in April to a wave of negative reviews and a quick drop in players. Newman apologised to players who expected more from the Sandbox Game and asked everyone to bear with the studio while the changes land.