Facepunch Studios

Facepunch Studios Ltd is a British independent developer and publisher of video games headquartered in Walsall, England founded in June 2004 and incorporated on 17 March 2009[2] by Garry Newman. The company is most known for its sandbox video game Garry's Mod and survival game Rust.[3] They're currently developing a sequel to Garry's Mod titled S&box, set to enter early access at some point in 2021.[4]

"Garry Newman" redirects here. For the singer, see Gary Numan.

Facepunch Studios Ltd
TypePrivate
IndustryVideo games
FoundedJune 2004 (2004-06)
FounderGarry Newman
Headquarters
Walsall
,
England
Key people
  • Garry Newman
  • Craig Gwilt
Products
Revenue£11.25 million (2018)[1]
£5.35 million (2018)
Websitefacepunch.com

History

Facepunch Studios was founded by Garry Newman in June 2004 for the forthcoming release of Facewound. Newman and his collaborators intended to use this studio name instead of one of their personal names to appear more professional.[5][6] The name "Facepunch" came from the brainstorming of names for the game Facewound – where something "stupidly macho" was required. Two names were chosen at the end: Facepunch and Facewound. Facewound was used for the game, but Facepunch was deemed "too funny sounding to just leave to die" – and so was used as the name for the company.[7]

In 2004, Garry Newman started the development of Garry's Mod, originally a side project, which eventually took over the Facewound forum as well as most of Newman's time. Facewound was later postponed and cancelled, and Facepunch Studio disbanded. Garry's Mod has become the flagship game of Facepunch Studios, regularly being one of the top played Steam games, having been released near Steam's inception.

The studio has 20 employees working on Rust and five people are working on prototypes like Deuce or Space Game.[8]

Garry's Mod

Garry Newman has not been formally trained as a computer programmer. Garry's Mod started out as a sandbox mode for tinkering in Valve's Source engine.[9] Not truly considered a video game,[10] and more of a playground, the game takes assets from Valve's own video games like Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal, etc., and allows users to pose them with different tools offered by Garry's Mod. As of January 2016, the game has sold 10 million copies.[11]

Rust

Rust is an online multiplayer survival game, based on games such as Minecraft and DayZ. Rust's inception stemmed from Facepunch's frustration with DayZ's gameplay; inheriting its cruel player versus player model and Minecraft's crafting and building aspects.[12] Rust's grand concept was to develop a game where the players would be able to mold the environment: hunting, scavenging, gathering, and looting for survival; and players themselves impeding or assisting each other's success.[13]

Although the game has been criticised for being too brutal, Facepunch Studios has intimated that an artificial scoreboard, encouraging players to "play nice", would be to the detriment of the game: "There shouldn't be a system hanging around forcing people to be good. It removes a lot of gameplay fun."

Rust sold over 150,000 copies in its first two weeks. Garry's Mod, in comparison, only sold 34,000 in two weeks.[14] By 2017, it had sold over five million.[15] The game officially released out of early access in February 2018.[16]

Facepunch officially stopped selling the Linux version of Rust in July 2018. Facepunch does still support the Linux version.[17]

S&box

S&box (pronounced "sandbox") is an in-development sequel to Garry's Mod. Newman stated Facepunch was working on a Garry's Mod sequel in late 2015 with a focus on virtual reality.[18] It was formally announced in 2017 as being developed on Unreal Engine 4,[19] but development was paused in 2019[20] and later shifted to Valve's Source 2 engine in March 2020. [21] It is set for an early access release in 2021.[4]

Games developed
Year Title Platform(s)
2006 Garry's Mod Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows
2018 Rust macOS, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Clatter Microsoft Windows
2019 Chippy Microsoft Windows
2021 S&box Microsoft Windows

References
  1. Facepunch Studios, Financial Statement, 29 September 2018, retrieved 29 January 2020
  2. "FACEPUNCH STUDIOS LTD", Companies House
  3. "Play Rust". Retrieved 18 March 2013.
  4. "s&box". sbox.facepunch.com. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
  5. "Facepunch Studios". Facepunch Studios. Archived from the original on 24 November 2005.
  6. "Facewound". Facewound. Archived from the original on 15 October 2005.
  7. Newman, Garry. "Q&A". Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  8. Narcisse, Evan (28 July 2014). "Some Fans Pissed at Rust Creators For Working on New Game [UPDATE]". Kotaku. Gawker Media. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  9. Totilo, Stephen. "Kotaku's Garry Interview". Kotaku Gaming. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  10. Totilo, Stephen. "Meet Garry, The Guy Who Re-Made How We Re-Make PC Games". Kotaku. Retrieved 29 September 2019.
  11. Garry Newman [@garrynewman] (2 January 2016). "Jesus christ. GMod sold its ten millionth copy over new years" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  12. "About Rust". Facepunch Studios. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  13. Kelly, Andy. "Rust and player Freedom". PC Gamer. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  14. "Rust Sells 150,000 Copies In Two Weeks". CINEMABLEND. 4 January 2014. Retrieved 29 September 2019.
  15. "Community Update 127". 14 March 2017. Retrieved 3 July 2017.
  16. Newman, Garry. "Devblog 197". rust.facepunch.com. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
  17. "Facepunch are no longer selling the Linux version of the survival game Rust (updated)". gamingonlinux.com. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
  18. Iwaniuk, Phil (9 September 2015). "Garry's Mod 2 is in development, won't be called Garry's Mod 2, will have VR support". PCGamesN. Archived from the original on 15 November 2019. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
  19. Donnelly, Joe (5 September 2017). "S&box could become Garry's Mod 2 but is 'nowhere near that yet,' says GMod creator". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on 7 September 2017. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
  20. Livingstone, Christopher (24 December 2019). "How a 'total accident' led to Garry's Mod's funniest feature and 15 years of twisted success". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on 24 December 2019. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
  21. Newman, Garry (27 April 2020). "Back Online". Sandbox. Archived from the original on 27 April 2020. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
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