Garry’s Mod is the kind of thing that, even if you’ve never heard of it, it has been so influential that it is nigh impossible for you to have not seen the impact it has had in something that came after it that was influenced by it. The game creation platform is responsible for scores of YouTube videos on top of entire games, and now, its spiritual successor s&box, which is powered by Valve’s Source 2 engine, will be out on Steam later this month, on April 28, 2026.
The release date was quietly revealed with the game creation platform’s Steam page getting updated today to list the Tuesday release date. It also arrives days after developer Facepunch Studios (who recently offered to save Amazon’s New World MMO) shared a roadmap update on its website, which revealed arguably the biggest element that users of s&box will be able to take advantage of.
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“We signed the new license with Valve this week, allowing us to allow people to export games from s&box’s editor and ship them as standalone games on Steam without paying us anything,” Facepunch Studios writes. “This has been a bit of a complicated journey, but with a lot of reassurance and compromises, we’ve got there.”
That means users will be able to build a game using s&box, and release that game independently of s&box for people to buy and download on Steam. It’s a huge element of the platform that could see its popularity spike once creators get their hands on it, though Facepunch Studios is clear that it is still ensuring any and all possible kinks that could get in the way of users selling their creations on Steam are ironed out.
“We still have work to do on our end. We need to create a license between Facepunch and the people shipping games, then double and triple check everything is legit,” the studio writes, “but I wanted to share this progress with the community so they know that Valve did the bizzo.”
It’ll be interesting to see what people create with the tools in s&box. Perhaps we’ll get the next Skibidi Toilet out of it, though hopefully that doesn’t result in another poorly aimed DMCA strike.
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