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Facepunch Studios

Coordinates: 52°36′50″N 2°00′21″W / 52.61391°N 2.00596°W / 52.61391; -2.00596
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"Garry Newman" redirects here. For the singer, see Gary Numan.
Facepunch Studios Ltd
Company typeLtd
IndustryVideo game industry
Founded2004, incorporated in 2009[1]
FounderGarry Newman
HeadquartersWalsall, England
Key people
Garry Newman, Craig Gwilt
ProductsFacewound, Garry's Mod, Rust, Before, Deuce, Arcade, Space Game
RevenueIncrease US$22 million (2006 – Dec 2013)[2]
Increase US$55 million (Dec 2013–2014)[3][4][5][6][7][8]
Number of employees
25 (2013–2014)[9][10]
Websitefacepunchstudios.com

Facepunch Studios Ltd is a British independent video game development company headquartered in Walsall, England founded in March 2009[1] by Garry Newman. The company is most known for its sandbox video games Garry's Mod and Rust.[11]

History

Facepunch Studios was originally developed under the partnership of Garry Newman, Matthew Schwenk, Bryn Shurman, and Arthur Lee for the video game Facewound, in 2003. The group adopted Facepunch Studios as a company name to avoid looking "unprofessional"; and to further the development of their side scroller, the Facepunch forum was also established.[12]

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.[13]

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, and as of November 2013, the game has sold 3.5 million copies,[14] 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.[10]

On 24 September 2014, Garry Newman acquired Before and the developer working on it, Bill Lowe.[citation needed]

Garry's Mod

Garry Newman has not been formally trained in code. Garry's Mod started out as a sandbox mode for tinkering in Valve's Source engine.[15] Not truly considered a video game, 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.[16]

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.[17] Rust's grand concept was to develop a game where the players would be able to mould the environment: hunting, scavenging, gathering, and looting for survival; and players themselves impeding or assisting each other's success.[18]

Although the game has been criticised for being too brutal, Facepunch Studios has iterated that an artificial scoreboard, encouraging player 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." Instead the company opted to implement voice chat; keeping players from shooting each other on sight, out of fear.

Rust's sold over 150,000 copies in two weeks, compared to Garry's Mod, which only sold 34,000 in two weeks. As of 23 May 2014, more than 1.6 million total copies have been sold, making more than US$46.5 million in total.[7] As of 24 December 2015, sales have surpassed over 3 million. Rust is still in alpha.[19]

Before

On 24 September 2014 Garry Newman announced that Facepunch Studios would be taking on Before to develop. Before is being created by Bill Lowe under the company.[20]

Games

Title Year Genre Platform
Facewound 2003 Shoot 'em up Microsoft Windows
Garry's Mod 2004 Sandbox Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux
Rust 2013 (alpha) Survival Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux
Before[21] In development Survival Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux
Deuce In development[22] Tennis Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux
Arcade In development[23] Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux
Troubleshooter[24] In development[25] Arcade shooter Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux
Chunks[26] 2016 Microsoft Windows
Absorb[27] In development Action, Survival Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux

References

  1. ^ a b "FACEPUNCH STUDIOS LTD", Companies House, Company No. 06848626
  2. ^ Newman, Garry (5 March 2013). "Mailbag | garry's blofg". garry's blofg. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
  3. ^ Newman, Garry (21 February 2014). "Garry's Mod has just broke $30,000,000 !". Gamasutra. Twitter. Retrieved 21 February 2014.
  4. ^ Wawro, Alex (3 January 2014). "Garry's Mod creator finds unexpected success with new game Rust". Gamasutra. Think Services. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  5. ^ Petitte, Omri (11 February 2014). "Rust hits 1 million sales after two months". PC Gamer UK. Future plc. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  6. ^ Newman, Garry (21 February 2014). "And if my calculations are correct". Twitter. Twitter, Inc. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
  7. ^ a b Newman, Garry (23 May 2014). "Now that 1.6 million people have bought the game we feel we need to make things happen a bit faster than that". PlayRust, Inc. Retrieved 23 May 2014.
  8. ^ Newman, Garry (27 June 2014). "In other news.. Garry's Mod sold 152,000 copies in one day during the Steam Sale.. 50 times the normal daily average!". Twitter, Inc. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  9. ^ "Official Facepunch Studios Member Website". Retrieved 17 June 2014.
  10. ^ a b Narcisse, Evan (28 July 2014). "Some Fans Pissed at Rust Creators For Working on New Game [UPDATE]". Kotaku. Gawker Media. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  11. ^ "Play Rust". Retrieved 18 March 2013.
  12. ^ "Web Archive, Facewound". Web Archive. Archived from the original on 6 February 2007. Retrieved 3 April 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  13. ^ Newman, Garry. "Q&A". Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  14. ^ Newman, Garry. "Sales". Twitter. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  15. ^ Totilo, Stephen. "Kotaku's Garry Interview". Kotaku Gaming. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  16. ^ "GMod sold its ten millionth copy over new years". Twitter. Retrieved 3 January 2016.
  17. ^ "About Rust". Facepunch Studios. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  18. ^ Kelly, Andy. "Rust and player Freedom". PC Gamer. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  19. ^ Newman, Garry. "Garry's Mod and Rust Launch". Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  20. ^ Newman, Garry (24 September 2014). "Before". Facepunch Studios. Retrieved 31 December 2014.
  21. ^ http://www.beforegame.net
  22. ^ http://www.facepunchstudios.com/2014/07/30/deuce-devblog-1/
  23. ^ http://www.facepunchstudios.com/2014/08/29/arcade-devblog-1/
  24. ^ https://playtroubleshooter.com/2016/01/22/troubleshooter/
  25. ^ http://www.facepunchstudios.com/2014/08/07/formerly-known-as-riftlight-devblog-3/
  26. ^ https://playchunks.com
  27. ^ http://www.facepunchstudios.com/2016/08/17/absorb-1/
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