S&box Dev Garry Newman: Launch Was "S**t," Too Much Content Is the Problem

Did you check out S&box during its free weekend? If you did, you might have noticed something: way too many games, and not enough ways to find the good ones. Well, creator Garry Newman agrees with you.

Newman, the mind behind Garry's Mod, has been pretty candid about the rough launch of his spiritual successor. After YouTuber Eridium posted a video titled "S&box's Free To Play Weekend Isn't Enough," Newman jumped into the comments to address the criticism head-on. His verdict? "The launch was shit. The free weekend was shit." Ouch. But hey, at least he's not sugarcoating it.

The core issue, according to Newman, is content overload. "There being too much content is a problem," he wrote. "It's no good having 20 good games on the platform when they're swimming in the sea of 500 tech demos and clickers." That's a familiar problem for any platform that relies on user-generated content—and S&box has been hit hard by a flood of generative AI slop since launch. Newman says they already have plans to address it, including a shift to a Steam Workshop model for games instead of "a system where we show you 200 games and let you choose."

But the damage goes beyond just discovery. Newman didn't hold back about the fallout: "It has burnt bridges and made people angry, it's given a negative view of s&box, it's turned the gmod community against it. We can't get away from that, we fucked it." He added that the situation is "deflating, demoralizing and embarrassing." It's a rare moment of raw honesty from a developer—and a stark contrast to the usual PR spin.

Another sore point has been the game's character designs, which feature sausage-like figures with a Mr. Meaty vibe. Newman admits he still likes their look, saying it "gave the game and the platform an identity." He argued that if an indie studio had made them, "people wouldn't bat an eyelid," but because S&box is compared to Half-Life 2, it's a problem. Despite wanting to make the sausages more likable, he's now throwing in the towel: "I think I'm done trying now and we're just going to get rid of it and push the human characters forward."

So what's next? Newman's plans to fix discovery could be a game-changer—if they work. The Steam Workshop approach would let players subscribe to specific games rather than being dumped into a chaotic list. It's a proven model, but will it be enough to win back the community? Only time will tell.

For now, S&box is in a tough spot. But Newman's willingness to own the mistakes and make changes is a step in the right direction. Will you be giving S&box another shot? Or are you waiting to see if the fixes actually land? Let us know in the comments.