😊 Let's discuss

Garry started a poll and many people voted yes, people want clickers banned, and idle games go in there too, since they are very close as a genre. But should this actually be done? Will it fix the situation?

In general, all of this is happening because of the flood of games made very quickly in the clicker/idle genre, where the point is usually to earn from PlayFund or to test your skills on the platform. But what is surprising is that about 5-6 clickers like this are made every week, and only 1 becomes popular. Yes, maybe it is botting, but unfortunately I noticed two things:

This is the scariest conclusion: most likely these are not bots, these are real people who opened the game for 2 minutes and then spent 2 hours there. I ran into this myself in one of those games. It had a terrible AI interface, but it still pulled me in for about 30 minutes. Sadly, if there are clickers that are much better at hooking players than games in more complex genres, then the mindset needs to change.
Some of these games bring their own community. Back when s&box could be obtained for free, this was very easy to see. Now there are problems with that, since not everyone is ready to pay $20. But this phenomenon does exist.

You might be surprised, but I'm still in favor of ban clickers. I'm interested to understand which ones would actually get banned, and what Garry's vision for the platform is in general. I also would not be against simply punishing them through PlayFund, where they would get something like $0.1 per player hour. Overall, I want the platform to keep moving forward and evolving: we already had the idle/clicker hype, now it is time for tycoons/incrementals, then coop/role plays, meaning there is a move toward more complex games.

But based on the points above, I'll say this: it will not solve the problem. Users need to be shown a stack of random games and games that have actually proven themselves, like Dark Descent and so on. Right in the main menu. A random weekly stack of 3-4 games would also work.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

2 months ago

#2

inhuman

Member

JoinedMay 2026 Posts11 Score2,255

I think don't ban them but disable playfund or manually approve it if it's not low effort game but idk how that'd work.

2 months ago

#3

OceanSponge

Member

JoinedFeb 2022 Posts15 Score7,264

I dont think we should ban them either. The "clicker" and "idle" tag in the review system could be used to identify potential candidates if they make over X threshold of playfund money they get reviewed by facepunch and potentially have their playfund reduced to .5 or something. Could also make them harder to access through the discovery and games page which seems like the approach Facepunch is taking right now.

2 months ago

#4

gasleet

Member

JoinedAug 2024 Posts78 Score6,923

I made a list of my thoughts:

If these games have the biggest audience and most engaged players, they should get a fair share of the playfund.
Botting needs to be stopped. Be it playing, liking or reviewing.
If someone brings sales by getting their community to play their game, it should be rewarded, not punished.
What about other low effort games? Obbys for example - should they categorically be exempt from the playfund?
I made a game and it earned $70. It's not good. Should it be banned or exempt from the playfund because it's bad?

Fundamentally I don't think idlers or clickers should be punished or pushed to the side. Apparently there are fans!
I also think the Playfund should be fine tuned to encourage behaviour that's healthy for the platform. This also means which games are included or how you qualify for it.

There is and will be even more bad and low effort games on the platform. Beginners will make the 69th Flappy Bird and publish it. I think they should be free to do so. Surfacing a breadth of good games is important and difficult, but will have large impact on S&box's future.

2 months ago

#5