S&box creator Garry Newman vows to combat AI slop flooding Garry's Mod successor

'Eventually the slop will just fall to the bottom': Garry's Mod sequel launches to 'mixed' reviews, but Garry himself isn't worried about AI games on the main page

"Low quality, obvious AI-created slop is going to be a growing problem in every creative outlet." Today saw the release of s&box, the long-in-development successor to Garry's mod that's also open source and hopes to become a kind of Roblox for dads. There's no denying the potential of this toolkit, nor the commendably generous principles behind why it's been released in the way it has, but it does have one immediate issue. And it's 2026, so of course that issue is AI-generated slop. S&box's Steam reviews are, at the time of writing, decidedly "mixed", with the vast majority of negative reviews referencing AI in some respect. I've just downloaded the game-slash-platform to have a look and, on the landing page where you can view what's on offer, a lot of the games being offered do look like they've been tossed together quickly using such tools, and have the negative ratings to match. I also don't think I've ever come across a more intriguing game name, in both a good and bad way, than "Terry's Granny (Now with Co-op!)" I will note that there are roughly as many positive reviews, but here's a brief selection from the negative Steam reviews: Stiles: "At release there is like 90% AI generated slop which is silently accepted by Facepunch. So you can expect that this platform will be full of AI-generated slop, and Facepunch gladly pays them for doing no work and committing theft." Babouche: "You will get more fun on transformice than this game full of 'AI slop' and money farm game like on roblox and fortnite." SomeGhoosName: "It's an unoptimized mess with a 'game hub' filled with 'vibe coded' AI slop, not to mention that the developers themselves support AI in their official discord." Archupump: "Filled with AI slop and low-effort gambling simulators. If that is something you are interested in, this is your place." Mado: "Filled to the brim with low quality, asset flip, braindead AI slop which facepunch seems to blindly accept." I could go on, but you get the idea. Developer Facepunch admits they'll "have to deal with people using AI in obvious, low quality ways" though that's clearly a work-in-progress. The studio's founder Garry Newman acknowledges that s&box "isn't perfect" and says the goal from hereon-in is a weekly cadence of updates with close attention paid to player feedback. "Low quality, obvious AI-created slop is going to be a growing problem in every creative outlet," Newman told RPS. "We don't encourage using AI to be creative. We don't encourage using AI to create games for you. But we do acknowledge that it's a good learning tool and it's a good productivity tool. We'll be taking action to promote human creativity and push obviously AI-created slop off the main page." PC Gamer's Chris Livingston sat down with Newman recently at GDC, and the issues of moderation and AI came up. Do bear in mind that Newman was talking shortly before s&box was released into the wild. "You expect the community to flag it up, basically, with a lot of these systems that don't exist yet, because we're not released yet," said Newman. "My general thing with moderation is you want something to moderate before you create a system to moderate it. So we want people to break the rules, and then we'll notice, and then we'll create a system, and you can apply that retroactively, and you can find the right system for it then: which might be AI, it might be manual review. There's a lot of options nowadays." As for Facepunch's general stance on AI, Newman said it's a no-brainer that people are going to use it and praises the technology in some respects, while acknowledging the 'slop' problem. "I don't mind AI that much, because it makes my job so much easier, but I know a lot of artists are more sensitive over AI," said Newman. "I think programmers are over it now. They've seen how useful it is, how more efficient it makes them. My thoughts on AI with programming are basically the same as porn." Hold up, let him cook. "So like if you use too much porn, you lose your ability to ejaculate using your imagination," said Newman. "Yeah I think you need to kind of split it 50/50: you need to use your imagination sometimes to be able to do that. I think it's the same with coding. If you count on AI to always do it, then you're going to lose the ability to think critically and do [it yourself]. But I think I've learned more from AI than I've outsourced to it, it's taught me techniques and new things that are way better than anything I've ever come up with on the web or search." As for whether Facepunch has a codified policy on AI, Newman said the studio uses it in "early pre-production stuff" but he's sensitive as to why artists will feel very differently to coders about it. "My policy on AI in s&box is I think eventually the slop will just fall to the bottom," said Newman. "Nobody will be interested, because they'll see [through it], but also it's evolving that fast we can't really ignore it, and we can't say don't use AI, because we use AI in our coding all the time. It's useful, it's fast. But for art it's kind of a hot topic, for our artists it's a really hot topic. And I can see the point when it's been trained on their work." Newman says the use of AI at Facepunch on the artistic side is more of "a replacement for Google Images" than anything which will find its way into the final product, and sees s&box following a similar trajectory to gmod. "In Garry's Mod we didn't approach it with a plan in mind to make it better, but we knew that while we were making it we'd naturally spot the mistakes that we made," laughs Newman. "Well that I made in Garry's mod, and fix them along the way. And that's kind of what we've been doing [in s&box]."

As Garry's Mod successor quickly becomes overrun with gen-AI after launching on Steam, Garry himself commits to "taking action to promote human creativity"

The follow-up to Garry's Mod, S&box, has been out on Steam for only a day, and there's already some discourse going on. As with anything that involves user-generated creativity these days, AI projects are starting to appear, prompting the devs to make it clear that nothing they've done involves the technology. Garry Newman, creator of Garry's Mod and founder of S&box developer Facepunch Studios, addressed the issue in a statement to Rock Paper Shotgun. "Low quality, obvious AI-created slop is going to be a growing problem in every creative outlet. We don't encourage using AI to be creative," he says. "We don't encourage using AI to create games for you." There'll be some moderation of what gets pushed most prominently within S&box, but he concedes there are use cases in learning about development or simply making things quicker. "We do acknowledge that it's a good learning tool and it's a good productivity tool," Newman adds. "We'll be taking action to promote human creativity and push obviously AI-created slop off the main page." If you're not fully aware, S&box is essentially a game development, designed to make creating games fun, intuitive and quick. It's a successor, of sorts, to Garry's Mod, a similar toolkit that lets users fiddle with physics and such. While the idea is you'd contribute something yourself, you can also spend your time browsing other people's work at your leisure. AI presents a dilemma for the studio, because they don't want to discourage anyone from contributing, nor do they want to be policing the origins of every asset in each submission. That's a Sisyphean task in terms of moderation. For now, removing the spotlight from anyone going that route seems like the fairest middle-ground. At time of writing, S&box has Mixed reviews on Steam, and the proliferation of generative-AI is a significant theme of the feedback. "Let us filter out the AI slop. It's really not a great look if your spiritual successor to Garry's Mod has a front page filled with nothing but AI," reads one of the more highly rated reviews. "Please remove the AI slop. Please ban the use of AI generated thumbnails--or descriptions," another reviewer states. A boiler-plate on the Steam page warns of gen-AI being part of what the community comes up with. "This game contains user-generated content, which may contain AI generated stuff. We don't AI generate anything," reads the statement.

Garry's Mod Creator Wants to Push 'AI Slop' Off the S&box Main Page Amid 'Mixed' Steam User Review Rating

The successor to Garry's Mod, S&box, is getting slammed with AI-generated content, much to the dismay of its creator. Back in 2006, a little game known as Garry's Mod hit Steam. Players were empowered to create whatever they wanted with Valve's Source engine, leading to a boom of online role-playing servers, games like Prop Hunt, and much more. It's similar to Roblox in many ways. It remains a highly successful Steam title, especially because it has been priced at $10 since its launch 20 years ago. However, creator Garry Newman has always had aspirations to do more with the concept, and so, a successor known as S&box was born. It utilizes a heavily modified version of the Source 2 engine and has been in the works for years now, but now, it's finally here. S&box was released earlier this week, but it has run into some issues. There has been a surge of AI-generated content from players, which is overshadowing the human-made content. This is a big issue since S&box is about letting people create, share their creations, and allowing others to experience them at their leisure. Steam reviews for S&box are currently mixed, with a number of negative reviews citing "AI slop" as a core issue. One Steam review stated that S&box is "AI-infested," and the game has become overrun by the NFT/crypto community. However, this goes against Newman's intentions. The creator noted in a statement to Rock Paper Shotgun that the team at Facepunch Studios is working to resolve the matter and promote "human creativity." "Low quality, obvious AI-created slop is going to be a growing problem in every creative outlet," said Newman. "We don't encourage using AI to be creative. We don't encourage using AI to create games for you. But we do acknowledge that it's a good learning tool and it's a good productivity tool. We'll be taking action to promote human creativity and push obviously AI-created slop off the main page." It's unclear if Newman intends to remove AI-generated content altogether or just make it so it's not as prevalent to users who are browsing content in the game. S&box has also worked with Valve to allow creators the ability to publish their creations as standalone games on Steam. One can only hope that this won't open the floodgates to even more AI-generated games on Steam. As with any user-generated content hub, moderation is extremely important, and the increased popularity of AI may make it very difficult to easily moderate. It also may be challenging for Facepunch if AI, NFTs, or crypto drive a sizable portion of the community, and they're punished for leaning into those things. It could drive away users, but perhaps that's a risk the team would be willing to accept if that's not the audience they want to cultivate. Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.