

Q:How big is your team now? You must have scaled up. I did some rough maths this morning: in terms of profits, from sales and royalties, in a month Rust has made about 40 per cent of what GMod has made in about nine years.

Garry Newman:Yeah - we never, ever expected anything to dwarf GMod's success. Still, it's surprising how many people did buy it. Garry Newman:Well, people like doing the opposite of what you ask them, don't they? We never exactly wanted people to not buy the game, as such, but at the same time it serves as a warning - if they buy it then it crashes we can say 'we told you so'! "I did some rough maths this morning: in terms of profits, from sales and royalties, in a month Rust has made about 40 per cent of what GMod has made in about nine years" Q:You've had very impressive sales numbers so far: nearly a quarter of a million people have ignored you when you told them not to buy the game yet. We caught up with Newman to find out how development of the vicious multiplayer survive 'em up was progressing, how nice he thinks his players are and whether or not he thinks it'll ever be finished. There are other bits of magic in the works, but for now it's Rust which is taking centre stage at Facepunch, selling over a quarter of a million copies via Steam's early access program and building the sort of online community engagement which many 'higher-profile' games can only dream of. Newman has capitalised on the ever-growing popularity of Garry's Mod impressively, ramping up development over nine years to turn a pet project into a valid commercial concern which employs several people and is working on a number of simultaneous projects: Facepunch Studios. Or those who just want to shoot headcrabs out of a trebuchet. GMod started as a fun diversion, a project Newman took on whilst learning how to code along the way, but to date it's shifted over 3.5 million copies, booking over $22 million in revenues and establishing itself as an accessible tool for budding developers, animators and scripters. Less of a game than a tool, GMod allows users to muck about in Valve's Source engine to create machinima, physics experiments or giant meme explosions - if you own Garry's Mod and at least one Source Engine game, you're good to go. Garry Newman's eponymous Garry's Mod is quite the phenomenon.
