Facepunch founder Garry Newman acknowledges the platform has struggled with reviews and retention

Facepunch Studios plans to make its s&box platform free-to-play toward the end of the year as it shifts from offering as many games as possible to promoting the best and most popular ones.

In a post on the s&box website, founder Garry Newman said the platform "is not well liked" and "doesn't have good retention". He said Facepunch had focused on the engine and development experience, but "we're not selling an engine, we're selling a game."

Newman said he understood how charging for access while also selling skins, combined with other issues, could be "a big turn off". "We don't need the entrance fee, we need players," he said.

Players who have already paid will receive exclusive Steam inventory items, with extra for those who bought the game at $20 rather than $10.

Newman said discovery has been a struggle, with AI making it "very easy to knock out a game" and leaving players "overwhelmed by choice".

He said his idea of a "Netflix for games doesn't work", as people find games through recommendations, active multiplayer games, and streamers, influencers, and content creators.

Newman said s&box should instead be "a platform with the best, most popular games available", where "good taste and great opinions" are valued above all. This is "a very human thing" that AI can never replace, he added.

As part of that, Facepunch has changed the Play Fund into an approval system, where creators must apply and be accepted rather than enrolling themselves. Newman said the previous setup encouraged "the wrong type of games" and rewarded botting.

The studio generally wants to discourage clickers, idlers, slop, and UI-based games, and has removed a number of games and maps from the Play Fund that did not meet the new bar.

Facepunch is also moving toward the Steam Workshop and away from its own backend, which Newman said he is concluding has "mostly been a waste of time and resources". Maps are the first test, and are now also being published to the Workshop.

Newman said the studio plans to bring the Sandbox game to parity with Garry's Mod, and surpass it, with more NPCs, vehicles, multiplayer features, and support for addons and customization. The Citizen player model has also been removed from the menu and avatar editor, with a human model now the default.

The accompanying update also includes download size reductions, with Facepunch saying the 50 most played games shrank 22% in total once creators republish.