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.
