"Real players" You won't believe it, but this is exactly what real, loyal people look like. Yes, those who leave reviews about how much they like the game. For some reason, they look a lot like bots.


-Also from the positive reviews there are accounts with many cs2 hours and 2-3 in s&box. (bot farm with 3_000+ accounts)
-Also, all the positive reviews are just fake. The screenshots above are just empty accounts with an hour or two on S&Box.
-I just logged into this game and two servers with one player each were completely AFK. A server with 37 players had three AFK players at spawn, and I didn't see anyone else! I'm not even mentioning that I had a bug and couldn't even play this.
-If I'm partially wrong in the previous paragraph, then the reviews and likes are definitely inflated by 1-2 hour accounts.
-There are also accounts that have been playing not just 1-2 hours, but 12-20 hours only megashot since its release. Do you understand what that means?

It seems a good investor created new accounts to boost player numbers in games

My take on the game: It looks cool (from the video). If only I could play it (my inventory and guns couldn't be accessed) I'd like it and spend 10-20 minutes, no more.

Do I see unfair competition here? Yes. A lot of empty accounts have arrived, and they look a lot like bots. Do you guys understand how to attract a customer to a game works? If they've already played your game, that's already a success, but imagine what else comes with it: leaving a positive review, downloading and logging into S&Box, playing only this game and no others, and instantly becoming a loyal player. It's simply magical.

A Telegram channel with over 10,000 followers. Okay. I won't say it's active with 2-3 comments per post. Then why are the most loyal people who leave reviews either at zero Steam level or closed? Do you believe that? It's just a game being inflated to reach the top and make money. Just imagine asking your audience to come play your game. And the most loyal ones (those who like and review) end up with zero Steam account or weird, closed, empty profiles. It's magic.edited:

A question for Garry and FacePunch. I'm honestly shocked by your reaction to the community's desire for fair competition. Are they scammers or not? I just want to understand whether it's worth creating 100+ Steam accounts to abuse the recommendation system, or launching a single lobby with 30+ accounts to get the game to the top and make money.

And of course, a question for the developers: What kind of accounts are these, guys?

Looks like someone's screwed. The author will ask you if you've played his game to ask such questions, so be prepared, brother!
I suggest everyone start inflating their playtime using bots so that Facepunch will notice. Perhaps this was the plan, so the scammers could quickly make money on the platform and then shut down. I'm disappointed. This is my first engine, and I'm investing all my free time in it. I'm trying to make at least decent games without expecting any financial rewards—just feedback from players. But will there be any players here when the top games are occupied by clickers, AI games, and games aimed at making money? The only thing you're wrong about is that the game is literally a clone of Vampire Survivors, and Facepunch released their own version a week before this one, which is better made and has more heart.

We need to decide now. Time will pass, and these accounts will have 100+ hours in s&box and the bot farm from CS2 will migrate here. The gaming market is already artificially inflated.

Not fine. I know 10+ great developers and their projects. People used to determine trending games (pizza clicker, mayhem, tower defence, guess the song and a lot a lot) and long-term ones for their games (RP, s&miner). Now it's all artificial; new creations are less noticeable due to artificial inflated rankings, and projects like s&miner are no longer in the top 2, but alreay in the top 3 (it's just a matter of time under this system)

That's exactly what I'm talking about: imagine an audience of 1,000 people, distributed across games and developer projects, and they themselves determine which games are trending. A guy comes along with 100+ accounts and boosted accounts, and now the games are determined not by the community but by bots. This disrupts the balance of recommendations, the balance of feedback, the balance of game popularity.

I'm in favor of a gradual and healthy increase in the platform's audience.

Now you'll get feedback too; people would play your game. But you'll get it less and less in a system like this. It's only a matter of time. If other games start artificially inflating their prices, a healthy recommendation system will disappear. It won't be about the people and developers in the community anymore-it'll be about who's driven up the reviews, created the most accounts, and inflated the market.

I'm genuinely surprised this game hasn't been taken down yet. Reaching #1 trending in under a day feels extremely unlikely given its current quality and polish. It strongly suggests artificial inflation through bots or similar manipulation.

Facepunch really should investigate and take action as soon as possible. Issues like this can quickly damage the overall reputation of s&box and undermine trust in the platform across the entire community.

Matrix So you're seriously saying it's extremely unlikely. Well, if you don't have a media presence, that's true—it's unlikely anyone will log into your game on day one, except maybe friends.

This "problem," as you call it, will become even more prominent in the future. Big media personalities will create their own projects and promote them on social media. Are you also going to say that these are bots, and that these aren't real people, because the game immediately became the top online game?

Bots are everywhere, bots in Telegram, in Discord, in DX RP, bots are EVERYWHERE, we urgently NEED TO REPORT THIS TO GARRY, this can NO LONGER CONTINUE, the scoundrel who created Megashot calculated everything, started boosting bots into his main Telegram channel 4 years ago, gathered 10,000 bots all just to get 40 online in the S&box game, damn Russians… (although the founder is from Kazakhstan) 



Also, I forgot to mention that it’s extremely outrageous that people who came from the blogger and heard about s&box from him for the first time somehow didn’t play the game before and jumped straight into his game instead of our beloved DX RP.

You just sent screenshots of people with 5-50+ different games in s&box, with 500+ points on the left bar, not 0 lvl steam, joining dates from 2024 to 2025 and called them bots?

Did you just compare these guys, who are exactly the ones who define the community, with 0 Steam accounts, 20 points with only 1 game and 2-3 hours in the s&box and joining date - yestarday?

Just say your blogger's audience is people who didn't have Steam. They're in a Steam and bot farming group (what a coincidence), but they simply didn't have a Steam account before! They hadn't played games before, despite the fact that the blogger's activities are built on Steam. And they banded together, left reviews at the same time as they registered accounts. Just coincidences and miracles.

This is a direct quote from this ‘creator.’
“Okay guys, I’m recording from my phone so the quality is shit, but whatever. So many questions like — why, what for, what’s the point? What don’t you guys get? Too much text. Although, well guys, it’s not that much text, but it’s all important, all of it.

Look guys — what is this? I created a game on the s&box gaming platform, it’s like Roblox but on Steam, on Source 2, from the developers of Garry’s Mod and Rust. So it’s not some bullshit like you might have thought at first, it’s actually a solid thing with enormous potential — like 3-4 years ahead.

So here’s my benefit: you will play my game, you will boost my game’s online, my game will be in top 1 or top 2 by player count, and people playing s&box will come to our media resources — Discord, Telegram — and my community in Discord and Telegram will grow. This is beneficial for me, and I repeat — in the long term. I want to support this channel for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years because I see absolutely insane potential here — for myself and for you as well. This is also a very good Plan B if CS dies. If CS dies, we all move to s&box together.

Why? Because look — I created a game, you play it, and Facepunch themselves pay me money for you being in the game and being active. This is all beneficial for me because it comes back around. I take that money and pay you back — on every single one of your accounts, guaranteed, every week. Right now it’s $2 per week. And I repeat — guaranteed, on every account. Whether you have 10, 20, 150, or 500 accounts — I will pay $2 on every single account every week, guaranteed, from my earnings. Right now it’s coming from CS, but in the future it will come purely from the game. I think that starts in about a week — just taking a percentage of the profit and buying skins to distribute to you.

Also — regarding skins. Since you’re a CS audience and not a game audience, I can give you not the in-game punk helmet but just straight up $2 in Steam gift cards — 2 fever per week per account. Fever has great liquidity so I think it’s actually easier for you to just farm fever, play the game, keep our game in the top, our community stays on top, and we’re all the most badass, most awesome, and most importantly — kings of this niche that is just being born, where the first games are only now appearing in s&box.

And most importantly — we’ll already be on top before the game even officially launches. And after launch there will be an influx of new players who will look for a community, especially CIS players, and that’s where we come in — ‘hey, welcome, join our community on Telegram, TikTok, YouTube.’ Our community grows, everyone earns, I earn, you earn — everyone wins. And most importantly, it’s completely free.”

Well…
He doesn’t care about the platform, about Facepunch, about the engine, or about the community. His goal is to milk money out of you, just as his audience doesn’t care about any of that either — they just want their $2. And you know what’s the funniest part? The number of accounts is already greater than what he earned, meaning this idiot is operating at a loss. So how exactly are you going to pay up? Although I already know — half of those accounts were just created and they’re bots. Guys who are playing his game — do you actually believe you’re going to get paid?”

Если сравнивать мой и твой аккаунт, ты, кстати, тоже на бота похож, давай, скажи мне, что мы купили ботов в стим, дискорд, телеграм канал и чат, мы крутим реакции и делаем вид активной коммуникации (про 3 комментария под постом я уже читал, а в чат ты заходил?).

По Megashot уже 2 видео на ютуб, и я тебя удивлю, но скоро выйдут видео ещё и на нашом уже личном ютуб канале и ТикТок, а также у нас в дискорде уже есть и англо-язычные люди, которым мы будем выдавать награды, чтоб нас не спалили за накруткой, это явно очень продуманная накрутка.

По поводу аккаунтов, которые оставили хорошие отзывы, их оставили потому, что я просил это в посте в телеграмме и в чате в телеграмме (это можно найти в общем доступе, ничего не удалено), а знаешь, почему я просил? Потому что нас начали обсуждать, говорить, какие мы плохие и так далее из-за нашей системы наград, и если бы ты смотрел не только на хорошие отзывы, ты бы увидел, что там кучу плохих от людей, которые в игру даже 10 минут не поиграли.

А, ну и ещё, чтобы ботам было очень комфортно у нас в игре, мы увеличили количество нужных убийств мобов для выполнение задания в 2–3 раза, убрали место, где мобы не доставали игроков, пофиксили проблему, когда ты умирал, а таймер награды всё ещё шёл (то есть ты ничего не делал, но время шло), и прописали в хабе, что АФК режим игры не приветствуется и за это в дальнейшем будет наказание, а также у нас с первого дня выхода игры удаляются в чате телеграмм (где на данный момент находиться один из разработчиков фейспанч Sam) сообщения про ботов, фермы и так далее, вместе с этим прописано, что мы это не поддерживаем, так же и в дискорде.

Please speak english on the forum :((

You didn't forget to tell them how to register a Steam account, get a beta test for s&box, log in exclusively to your game, play only that game, and leave a positive review at the same time? Welcome to the internet. These accounts still only have sessions in this game.

Making a game? Cool
Developing a community? Cool
Promoting your game? Cool
Ask subscribers to leave positive reviews? Cool

I didn't ask that
Just tell me why these subscribers from the gaming community have zero Steam profiles. They have no games other than s&box, and they created an account yesterday. Why are the most loyal and dedicated people in your audience like that? Tell me-they hadn't played Steam before, but a new feature like MEGASHOT made them install it. Not CS, not Dota, not Rust, not ARC Raiders, not PUBG, not Deadlock, not Overwatch. MEGASHOT is what they were waiting for.

You won't answer my question. Because there's only one answer - bots.

I'm hoping FP are quietly addressing this and dealing with it in the background as to not compromise what they are doing. My only concern is the lack of care seemingly given towards the topic by the devs after I posted the initial query into what that group are doing

This was met largely with childish jokes from @Layla & Sam, with bad actors such as @ubre furthering unserious discourse surrounding the topic. If this project is going to succeed, it needs these matters to be taken seriously. Nobody wants to open the game, find the top performing one to be a Russian bot farm and then be dismissed by the actual developers of the game who would rather make jokes than address the concern. I get that it's the typical reddit-esc epic troll humour that FP often provide, but this is an important issue that I wish was met with more seriousness.

Sorry, I just had the auto-translator built into this site turned on, so I assumed you’d also be able to understand what I’m writing without needing an extra translation through ChatGPT, since I’m not that confident in it.

I like how you’re discussing us here, with a Telegram channel of 1,000 and 10,000 people, a Discord of 250, and a Telegram chat of 500 people, and at the same time you’re not surprised that a pizza simulator, where you can get into the top in 5 minutes, is currently getting almost the same online numbers.

Also, regarding bots.

Yes, our mistake was that the information was shared in a channel where people create farms for CS2 — I admit that. You showed screenshots of 7 people, while 2,100 players have already played our game.

As for our attitude toward this and our actions, which were limited to replies on Discord and the forum (I already wrote this, but I’ll repeat it since it seems you don’t want to read what I’m telling you):

What have we already achieved? We have eliminated all large-scale farms. It’s not profitable or convenient for people to create software to farm our game because it’s inconvenient, expensive (you need to hire a coder), and unstable. We’ve already said that this game won’t be permanent — in a couple of months we’ll create a new, higher-quality one, and this was more of a starting point to gather feedback from players.

What is still our issue? There are still people who benefit from playing with 5 accounts per week. Personally, I don’t know such people, but like you, I understand it exists. If you look at our average online numbers, it’s not that big, because those 5 accounts are spread throughout the day rather than logging in all at once — and that’s a purely theoretical number anyway. That’s why we will continue to fight this, so that in the end it won’t be beneficial for people to use more than 1–3 accounts. This will never turn into an advanced CS2 farming system, because people like us who deal with CS2 know how to make conditions where farming simply can’t exist due to inconvenience.

Separately, regarding payouts, scams, etc. — as far as I know, payments for the game are only made in the middle of the following month (correct me if I’m wrong), and players will start receiving their first rewards in a few days. You can monitor this and ask your friends, or personally make a streak and request a reward to verify fairness. The project creator has already shown his inventory with 1,600 helmets multiple times and even offered to add people on Steam so you could verify it personally — as I understand, most people ignored this.

So guys, all I want to say is: our project — not just a game, but the SboxNews project — is a long-term initiative. We create S&box news, post about the Facepunch team, about skin releases in the game. Most likely, tomorrow we’ll have the full launch of our YouTube channel about S&box, where the first introductory video explaining what this game is will be released.

We don’t have a goal to scam Facepunch and go on vacation to Cyprus. It’s more beneficial for us to earn in the long term. Even if the game gets removed, we will continue making news and earn through advertising other S&box games, because our audience will come from TikTok and YouTube — and there won’t be CS2 farmers there, so they will just play regular games without daily rewards.

Wow so all the bots to appear more ''legit'' now moved to idling facepunch games so that they dont ruin their playfund cut. Great! :)))

мыслящий субъект
The core problem isn't just that your game exists, it's that you're actively promoting botting in other communities and channels. If another YouTuber or influencer which encourages or facilitates botting were advertising their own game, they would (and should) receive the exact same scrutiny and consequences.

Your current defense doesn't really address this central issue. It sidesteps the key behavior that's actually causing the backlash.

Matrix I recommend you open the game's online pool 24 hours in advance, and you'll see that there are real players in Megashot.

When it's nighttime in Russia, the online pool drops to 5-10 players. This is logical: people are asleep and can't play.
Only during daytime or evening in Russia does the online pool start to increase in Megashot.

Just take a look. If you're convinced there are bots in the game, why aren't they constantly online? And like in other games, the online pool drops at night?

But in the pizza game, they're real bots. The online pool remains the same regardless of the time of day. You're right about that.

You can view the information online on this website: https://sbox.observer

Can't you guys answer a simple question?

These guys:
Investor (мыслящий субъект), Ambi Studio, Titanovsky

Who are those accounts in the screenshots in the post? Just tell me - is this your community that didn't know about Steam and was waiting for your game to finally install it? 

Or are bots inflating the game's popularity in the early days, boosting reviews and likes to reach the top? And now you're pretending nothing happened.

God Bless Megashot