Facepunch plans to replace s&box’s Citizen characters with human characters over the next month or so. Founder Garry Newman outlined the change in a pinned YouTube comment responding to creator Eridium’s criticism of the game’s launch, character design, and content discovery.
Newman had wanted to keep improving the Citizen design, which he felt gave s&box an identity. But comparisons with Half-Life 2 led him to conclude that continuing to work on the stylized characters was unlikely to quiet the criticism. Facepunch will move forward with human characters instead.
Eridium’s video also raised concerns about low-quality games, including AI-generated content, making stronger creations harder to find. In his response on X, Newman admitted, “The launch was shit. The free weekend was shit.” He said the rollout had burned bridges and turned the Garry’s Mod community against s&box.
Newman described the discovery problem as 20 good games getting buried among 500 tech demos and clickers. The current system can put 200 games in front of players at once. Facepunch plans to replace it with a Steam Workshop-style subscribe-and-install model for games and maps, alongside changes to Playfund incentives.
Facepunch had discussed hiring Eridium, but Newman said the creator was more useful as an independent critic who could keep challenging the studio. He also described AI as an uncertain moment for user-generated-content platforms, with decisions made over the next few months potentially looking different in hindsight.
Would the character change and a Workshop-style catalog give s&box a better first impression? Follow more of the conversation around creator platforms and game discovery through X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram.
