Why I think S&Box's move to Free-to-Play is a bad decision

Personally, I believe the transition to a free-to-play model is rather unfortunate, as it will have a number of consequences. (Please excuse any errors in the text; I used a translator :D)

1. Deterioration of content

Since the entry barrier will be limited to literally computer space, it will attract many people who may not be interested in the game itself, but rather in the opportunity to earn money. A larger number of players does not mean more quality content. There will be many more unfinished and low-quality prototypes, and more projects designed solely for profit. The share of such projects will significantly outweigh the share of quality ones. Combined with the transition to more rigorous game approval, the average wait time for a good game to be approved, coupled with several bad ones, will increase.

2. More spam, cheaters, and trolling

For the same reason: removing the entry barrier will make creating accounts much easier, meaning the cost of in-game bans and violating platform rules will be minimal. As a result, we can expect an increase in cheaters, spammers, and other violators. (I'm not sure how big a problem cheaters are for s&box specifically, but they can't be ruled out.) Reducing the cost of creating a new account increases the appeal of bypassing bans and potentially increases the workload on moderation.

3. Aggressive Monetization

After switching to a free-to-play format, developers will lose their primary source of income from the game. To compensate for this loss, new monetization methods will be introduced or existing ones strengthened. This could take the form of in-game currency, sales of cosmetic items (which is already happening), or paid features for developers. As mentioned earlier, game developers on the platform will also monetize their content. The simplest example is making game progression extremely slow and selling boosters to speed up leveling. More radical methods may also be used, such as cutting game features in exchange for donation features. It's fair to say that this is already present in Garry's Mod, but Garry's Mod itself does not feature in-game currency or microtransactions, leaving monetization to game servers and game modes.

4. Community Change
There are marginalized or toxic groups that spread negative messages (racism, chauvinism, xenophobia, etc.), and, as mentioned earlier, if they are banned, they will now be able to create a new account and continue their activities. Overall, toxic behavior will become more widespread. The proportion of players and developers INTERESTED in s&box will decrease compared to casual players, marketers, and others.

5. Loss of Identity
s&box is inherently attractive as a creative tool. Its value lies not only in the games, but also in the opportunity to create your own game projects. If the platform's development becomes increasingly focused on player retention, in-game purchases, and the commercial appeal of its projects, the very philosophy of s&box could change. Instead of a platform where users create games for the sake of experimentation and creativity, an ecosystem could emerge in which development becomes primarily a means of making money. This isn't guaranteed to happen, but the risk is certainly worth considering.

I've made these arguments based on the experience of existing similar games. Roblox is my primary reference point, which suffers from the aforementioned problems. It remains popular, but mainly due to its childish and trashy content, parodies of all possible trends and games. There are mentions of the platform being used to promote terrorism, and pedophiles exist on the platform. Extremely aggressive monetization of games on the platform is known, using in-game currency. Recently, thanks to new laws (in the UK, if I'm not mistaken), age verification was introduced, requiring players to take photos with their passports and show their faces, which negatively impacts online safety. But I'm not saying the platform itself is bad; it still boasts a large number of high-quality projects and a convenient user-creation system.

Looking at the state of Roblox and the disappointing launch of Hytale, which I was eagerly awaiting, I'd like to see S&Box avoid a similar situation, as this platform has enormous potential. Yes, some of the problems are already present or will appear later. However, the transition to free-to-play will worsen the situation. In my opinion, S&Box is capable of attracting more players, but this will happen gradually. It's worth recalling the history of Garry's Mod. At launch, the game didn't offer a million-dollar list of add-ons on Steam Workshop, the player base wasn't that large, but add-ons were created because it was easy. Potential players watched YouTube videos, they saw animations, they saw films, they came to try out modes (Sandbox, DarkRP, Murder, TTT, Prop Hunt), and they created their own content. The number of creative creators for this time hasn't decreased, if not increased. s&box already has a community of Garry's Mod creators who responded positively to the s&box announcement, meaning attracting some of them will create initial creative capital. The creative output of Garry's Mod creators attracted players to buy the game, and I see no reason why the same won't happen here. Therefore, I believe the transition to free-to-play is wrong. The game needs to create favorable conditions for content creation. There needs to be reasons to talk about the game, to show it off. Then players will come, and players will pay for it and start creating. Demand creates supply. The main thing is to create the game itself. Create tools for content creation, not shift it onto the players themselves and expect rapidly growing popularity and revenue.

F2P Model has seemingly always been the plan and justifiably so, what platform of games charges you to go on it nowadays? even if there is more slop because of more people, you could easily also argue there will be more quality games too as there are more people and more incentive to actually make good games because people will play them,

 "After switching to a free-to-play format, developers will lose their primary source of income from the game"  

If you mean FP this is just provably false, look at their finances, they have made more from item sales than game sales on a number of occasions and overall so far. And if you mean developers making games this makes no sense, more players would mean more people playing games, in turn incentive to make good games and potentially make money from them.



"If the platform's development becomes increasingly focused on player retention, in-game purchases, and the commercial appeal of its projects, the very philosophy of s&box could change."

This was a huge issue before launch and awhile after launch, FP are making steps to discourage these sort of retention slop games by being selective who they bring into playfund, which encourages people to make better quality of games, but realistically the biggest thing that is discouraging atleast imo is the little amount of players, which F2P will likely help.

It was planned for a while to go FTP but the justification for it happening sooner was the platform's low player counts. Without healthy player counts on game platform, other concerns are non-starters as a healthy player base is first required to have a game platform. That's not to say the outcomes you predicted are not bad, they are bad, but in a logical sense either a good or bad outcome relating to those arguments is blocked from happening; it doesn't start occurring one way or the other.
Attracting more players by other means than going FTP seems questionable... The reason other platforms did so in the way you described was probably more that they were a game first that had unique limitations and unique attractiveness as a game which later allowed them to evolve into a platform rather than just outright being a fairly typical modern game engine to start. Its also not inherent that expanding the player base by attracting players by others means would be expected to not bring out similar issues to the ones being related to FTP players.

I think FTP is premature, but at the same time, doesn't really hurt since that money will be spent on skins any ways or seems to prove. I think, I think of S&Box as being in between Roblox and Fortnite, in that it needs a couple of successful games to turbo charge the platform (and doesn't have to be an internal project) while attracting users or players to stay on it long enough to engage with the other games or content on the platform 

But it's interesting to think about, at least!

Here's my two cents as a fairly casual player. As it is, the game's reputation is bad, and that combined with the paywall guarantees a lot of people won't try it. I have a copy because I put in enough hours before the release to keep it; if that weren't the case, I wouldn't have paid for it. And as much as I'd like to try multiplayer with my friends or show them certain games on the platform, I wouldn't recommend they buy it in its current state.

Despite there being some great stuff to play, s&box feels very isolated. New stuff is sparse and existing stuff is often limited to short demos, simple games that can get old pretty quick, or one-and-done experiences. There's nothing wrong with those things, in fact I've really loved playing some of them. But it doesn't keep me coming back as much as I'd like. Not to mention the Sandbox mode, the game's namesake, has been incredibly unfinished for ages.

That said, I think the new direction the team is taking is a really good and healthy change, including going free to play. The main problem imo has always been that there simply isn't enough user-generated content there for a platform whose entire premise is to be built off it. I think opening the door for anyone to try it out is the best way to address that. Yeah there'll be more low-effort garbage, but that really doesn't matter if more people come in and make good stuff. If it's a good tool and a good platform, I feel that people will absolutely use it. I for one would be thrilled to tell a friend that they can just download s&box for free and play it with me; I even did that during the early access days. And I'm counting the seconds until it goes FTP so I can tell everyone I know to play RUN IT AGAIN. I'd love to see all the cool shit people have made get more traction and recognition from a significantly expanded audience. It's worthwhile to speculate on the potential good that could come from this as much as, if not more than, the potential bad. Keeping it paid and going off the expectation that people will come in gradually seems very unrealistic to me. By contrast, going FTP feels like just the kind of big move this game needs to bring people in. I think the positives pretty handily outweigh the negatives.

I feel that, that makes a lot of sense! 

Certain features need to be restricted for free-to-play users—especially the game development aspect. I can easily imagine what might end up in games created without any oversight, and I don’t believe Facepunch would be able to take swift action in such cases. We haven’t even received an answer to a single question of ours for a month now; this is something that would be so easily abused.