The Play Fund

If you make a game or a map and people play it, we'll give you some money. The more people play it, the more money we'll give you.

This is a way of monetising without encouraging each game to add microtransactions. My hope is that this will encourage people to make games that others want to play - rather than trying to make games that are the best at extracting money from you.
It depends. Right now we're funding s&box's development from GMod's revenue, because to me it's an evolution of Garry's Mod.
In the future I hope that S&box will be self sustained, from sales and cosmetics, and we'll take a chunk of its profits and stick it in the fund.

I also hope that we'll make the actual fund value public, but since this is still in the early development phase, I don't want to do that yet.
What about the scammers? The ones that are gonna make 300 new accounts and idle in a game to make the most money? What are you going to do about that?

Really? What do you fucking think we're going to do?
What about the grifters? The ones that are going to make games that lots of people want to play, and then make them want to play for a long time? What are you going to do about that?

These are called "Game Developers". I'm not going to be mad at people optimizing their games to make people want to play a lot. 

The algorithm is a tool. When games emerge that encourage people to idle in there, we'll tweak the algorithm to encourage other behaviour.
This is very much in development, and we're making it up as we go along. Getting this system in place was the first step.

Our next step is to get a payment system in place, so we can do KYC, tax forms and send money out. I'd expect that to be in place by the end of this month and, failing that, definitely by the end of next month.

We're particularly sensitive to people wanting to be paid out in obscure places, so when looking at a payment provider, the ability to pay out to as many countries as possible is on our mind. Obviously, if a country has sanctions against it, we won't be able to send money to people in that country until the sanctions are lifted.
You just need to publish your map or game, and then enable the Play Fund in the features. There's more information in the docs here.
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Apr 2021 151 posts
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Jul 2022 11 posts
Library bros stay losing
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Jul 2021 18 posts
Are the cartoon models placeholders?
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Jul 2022 70 posts
Hope Facepunch doesn't go bankrupt with this decision 
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Sep 2021 57 posts
First steps in monetisation (not jams). 

I'm waiting for server code for large projects in 500 players, as well as small projects in 50 players. Then monetisation will shine bright colours.

Good news, keep up the good work, FP
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Oct 2021 8 posts
Man I really gotta learn how to make games for S&box
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Aug 2024 9 posts
they probably aren't going to give much money out in the beginning in order to prevent needing to pay more money than they were expecting
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Sep 2022 8 posts
FP W
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Aug 2021 11 posts
Exciting stuff, going to be cool for people to be able earn a living off their creations.
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Jul 2021 17 posts
it'll be interesting to see where it goes, great news either way 
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Apr 2021 23 posts
I think it's really awesome that developers can just "make a great game" and then get paid for it.
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Jan 2023 13 posts
Awesome news! Love Facepunch for what they are doing. I’m not a game dev yet, but I really hope “Obviously, if a country has sanctions against it, we won't be able to send money to people in that country until the sanctions are lifted.” does not mean that people from Russia or China won’t be able to get payouts, considering how many people from these countries (Russia, at least) are interested in s&box and game dev in general.
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Jul 2022 70 posts
I wish s&box worked in China or had a Chinese version, it could blow there tbh
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Jul 2022 8 posts
As much as I appreciate these self-monetization ideas, they always feel like an all-or-nothing gamble. I don't believe s&box has the same level of audience as Gmod. Since this is still early in development, not many people know about its existence yet. I do hope you can attract more advertisements and interest so that people can create more content in s&box.
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May 2021 18 posts
I'm in the empire business
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Aug 2021 11 posts
Wow
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Sep 2023 14 posts
I love the mention of countries that are hard to pay out to. goes to show how much you think about the particularities/specifics of every feature you implement. huge W.
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Jul 2023 20 posts
Awesome!
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Jul 2022 10 posts
 Thank you for clarifying this question!
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Jul 2024 10 posts
We should be able to monetise code libraries. CurseForge does this pretty well!
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Aug 2022 12 posts
Very epic
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Oct 2021 7 posts
its like... *free money?





*excluding the blood, sweat, and tears put into developing
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Apr 2023 7 posts
"These are called "Game Developers". I'm not going to be mad at people optimizing their games to make people want to play a lot."

You should, because what WILL happen is that games will be made that don't make the player want to play more because they are fun, but games that use manipulation tactics to keep players playing, the same tactics ad infested mobile games use to get more eyes on the ads and drive up revenue. The same tactics casinos use to keep people gambling more and more

A system designed around player retention is a system asking to be abused with an influx of games designed to manipulate the player into playing more

things we ALL hate in games, things like Battle Passes, Loot Boxes, daily log in rewards are things this system rewards, because even if you don't allow microtransactions games will still use systems like Lootboxes to keep players playing

If you want a platform filled with greedy people motivated by profits over passion, then this is a perfect system

but if you want to reward quality over quantity, this is not it, this system rewards games with as little effort as possible into the actual game and the most effort possible into payer retention
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Apr 2021 151 posts
I feel like if there's a quality game that also makes people want to play a lot - they'll choose that quality game over a low quality game that makes them want to play the same amount. It's really a natural selection thing. 

Yes people will optimize their games to make people want to play them more. Game developers have been doing that for 60 years. I'm not sure what kind of games you want?
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Oct 2021 9 posts
As long as the discorvery algorithm promotes highly rated and popular games as well it shouldn't be a problem, ideally games like Opium will still have good visibility even if each play session is quite short.
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Jan 2025 1 post
FUCK YEAH GARRY & CO!
Lets get it - see you on my games bois
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Aug 2023 34 posts
i wonder will avg play time be affected by devs testing their game in production? 🤔
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Jul 2022 70 posts
Hm
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Feb 2025 1 post
I literally can't wait for S&box to become a fully-fledged game engine. I can't imagine opening Steam, playing a game made by the developer of Garry's Mod, and then, after months or so, releasing a game running on ( a modified version of ) Source 2. It just sounds crazy. I'm really, REALLY interested in how Facepunch (and Garry) will handle exporting games. 
people
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