Our philosophy back then was the same as it is today, which is that we wanted a platform that connected the people who created valuable content with the people that consumed it. When did the idea to start selling GMod on Steam come along? Was it Valve's idea or Garry's?ĮJ: It was the early days of getting Steam built, and it was pretty clear that Garry’s Mod had a big (and growing) audience. Paid mods are (still) a great source of ire among (some) players. It will be fun to watch what people build with the editor we’re releasing along with Half-Life: Alyx next year. Part of the process for us in shipping any of our games, but especially the single player ones, is letting go of them once they are released, and letting the community take bits and pieces of them in whatever direction they want to. What's it like to see the beloved characters from Half-Life and other Valve games being used with Garry's Mod for machinima and comics and videos?ĮJ: It’s pretty cool. Garry has always been about as good as it gets at picking the right direction to take his game. It’s a more difficult process than it sounds, because it really comes down to navigating a constant stream of feedback, but being limited in the amount of time to get everything done. We’ve always been impressed by Garry’s ability to iterate on the game and roll feedback from his community into the game so well. That said, it would have been pretty hard to predict the Garry’s Mod of 2019 back in 2004. So, on one hand, it wasn’t surprising that Garry started in a similar place that we did. Even in the early days of development, most of the experiments that people were running had the physics engine at its core. It felt like Garry’s Mod grew right out of that community after Half-Life 2 shipped.ĭid anyone at Valve have any idea the Source engine could be used the way it is in Garry's Mod? Are there any tools in GMod that surprised you to see?ĮJ: A lot of the identity of the gameplay of Half-Life 2 centered around physics. While having the code for Half-Life 2 out in the wild before the game was finished wasn’t a super positive experience for the team finishing the game, it's pretty cool to see what the mod community could get working with that unfinished codebase. I do remember there being a pretty significant, and somewhat underground, mod community that was working off of the Half-Life 2 source code leak from 2003. Plus you know, money.ĭo you recall when Valve first became aware of Garry's Mod? What were your first thoughts about it?Įrik Johnson: The specific point in time is a little tricky to pin down. Which is kind of pleasing since it’s also 15 years old. GN: It sells about 1.5m copies a year, and it’s sold just over 15m copies total. Tens of thousands still play it every day, but how are sales nowadays? Garry's Mod has been in the top 10-20 games on Steam for as long as I can remember. I probably wouldn’t have named it called Garry’s Mod if I knew where it would end up. At the time there was another mod called JBMod, made by a guy that went by "jb55." So it made sense that my take on that mod would be called Garry’s Mod-because I went by the name "garry". Garry Newman: You know, I think I kind of actually stole the name, it wasn’t my idea to name stuff after myself. PC Gamer: How did you come up with the name? The 15 year anniversary is the perfect time to chat about the strange legacy of Garry's Mod, so I fired over some questions via email both to Garry's Mod creator Garry Newman and Valve's Erik Johnson. Along the way from free sandbox mod for Half-Life 2 to standalone game on Steam, it's sold millions of copies, it's been used to make thousands of videos and webcomics, and has hundreds of popular mods and gamemodes created by users, like Prop Hunt, Jailbreak, Trouble in Terrorist Town, and more. It must have been difficult narrowing the selection down to just a dozen features, considering Garry's Mod has been around for 15 years now. You'll also see Ross Scott's comedy series Civil Protection, moody sci-fi drama Shelf-Life Part 1 and Part 2, the gorgeously atmospheric 40-minute long film Haven, and several other notable machinima highlights, all made with Garry's Mod, the physics sandbox created by Garry Newman and Facepunch Studios way back in 2004. The page displays some amazing Garry's Mod creations, like "Half-Life: Full Life Consequences"-a charmingly awful story written by a author named squirrelking and turned into a hilarious and unforgettable short film by YouTuber Djy1991. There's a fun holiday surprise over on the Garry's Mod website called the 12 Days of Garry's Mod.
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