Overview
- Facepunch founder Garry Newman wrote Wednesday that s&box has underperformed on reviews and player retention and that the studio is 'embarrassed' and 'ashamed' of the launch response.
- The studio said it will convert s&box to free-to-play toward the end of 2026 to drive player numbers rather than rely on an upfront purchase fee.
- Facepunch will replace its automatic Play Fund payouts with an approval-based system and use human curation to reduce low-effort and bot-boosted games that flooded discovery.
- Parts of s&box infrastructure will move to the Steam Workshop, download sizes for popular games have been cut after republishing, and the team will prioritize gameplay fixes such as NPCs, vehicles, multiplayer polish and performance on lower-end hardware.
- Existing buyers will receive exclusive Steam inventory items as compensation and the visible 'Citizen' player model has been removed from menus, while the studio aims to bring the sandbox experience to parity with Garry’s Mod and rebuild player trust.