Garry's Mod dev says he didn't want to sell it originally because no one would pay for it – 25 million copies later, he admits he was wrong

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We'll never get away from Skibidi Toilet

Facepunch Studios
(Image credit: Facepunch Studios)

If you've been on the internet long enough, you've likely seen video game shorts or odd gameplay sequences that more than likely came from the Garry's Mod toolset. It's one of the defining products on the Steam marketplace, allowing anyone to use the sandbox to create fun scenarios and game modes to share with others – such as the infamous Skibidi Toilet video.

The creator of Garry's Mod, Garry Newman, recently shared on the social media site formerly known as Twitter some sales stats for the toolset since its release with an interesting anecdote. As it turns out, Newman admits that he almost decided against putting it on sale in the Steam marketplace and all.

Thanks to Valve's insistence on putting the game on Steam, Garry Newman found considerable success with Garry's Mod, which, as of the tweet posted, had sold 25,560,290 copies. Along with further updates to the sandbox game over the years, Newman also founded an independent game developer, Facepunch Studios, which released the popular survival game Rust and found its own considerable success.

First released in 2006, Garry Mod's is a sandbox game and toolset that leverages assets from Valve's source engine, particularly pulling from games like Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 – this basically means you can make the G-Man or Resistance Fighter from Half-Life 2 into the star of their own experience. Garry's Mod allows players to pull any asset like characters, items, and locations into a sandbox and create whatever scenario or sequence they can from the tools available.

The more popular results are machinima videos such as Skibidi Toilet or, my personal favorite, Full Life Consequences. Still, it's also gone on to inspire several game modes that have taken on a life of its own such as the popular Prop Hunt game type, which is a take on hide-and-seek that has a team of players disguise themselves as objects on the map.

So far, Garry's Mod's popularity is still growing, with younger users playing the game to share their own bits of amusement with friends. The toolset also seemingly inspired other games to feature their own sandbox modes, such as Fortnite, PUBG Mobile, and, of course, Minecraft.

As of 2024, Newman's development studio is still cranking out updates for Garry's Mod and Rust, but Facepunch has also been working on a new game called Sandbox. This game is evidently the successor to Garry's Mod, but there hasn't been many updates for it in some time.

For more open-ended sandbox games with lots to do, check out our list of the best open-world games to play right now.

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Alessandro Fillari
Alessandro Fillari

Alessandro is a freelance writer and editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area who has covered the games, tech, and entertainment industries for more than 13 years. Having previously worked at GameSpot, CNET, and various other outlets writing features and coordinating event coverage, Alessandro enjoys playing games on PC, but also gives plenty of time to his Nintendo Switch. You can find him on various socials at @afillari.