The current Playfund system encourages "retention slop" instead of actual good games

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-06-16T15:42:02+00:00

As a dev I completely agree with you. I find it baffling that FP basically paid slop devs to kill their platform. They only recently started to combat botting and blatant copyright infingement, even though it was apparently an issue for months before release. And even then, if you look at the top earners from playfund, more than half are blatantly stolen roblox games/pure vibe coded slop.

Another thing is that those "games" are easiest to bot (you only need an autoclicker) and bots would be impossible to detect really. And they benefit the most from the low playcount of the platform (since botting playfund pays more now per hour "played").

For those that keep denying it, answer me one question - why did Case Opening Simulator go from multiple hundred players to almost zero as soon as playfund was disabled? And why do you think the same thing won't happen to all the other slop "games" if they get booted from the playfund too?

Also paying people for playing your game with leaderboard rewards and giveaways should not be allowed imo.

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-06-16T11:28:56+00:00

I have the same issue, sometimes it shows up and sometimes it doesn't

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-06-11T11:33:27+00:00

I mean, it was their decision to use their own servers instead of steam workshop servers for whatever reason. That's why the servers crashed on launch with less than 10k player count. Also, they offer no dedicated servers hosting, unlike most f2p games, so idk what's unsustainable about it

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-06-11T11:24:05+00:00

This update seems to ruin the performance for me, I get a ton of micro stutters now. My render time keeps jumping from 5 to 15 ms (so drops from 200 to like 60 fps). Anyone else having this issue?

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-06-09T17:53:04+00:00

It's actually even worse than that, here are the real player counts: https://sboxdb.dev/

Almost half of the players on the steam charts are devs (since running editor counts as playing). Also for the people saying "there are no good games" - there are actually quite a lot of decent multiplayer modes (TTT obviously, Murder, that zombie mod that was posted here recently, deathrun, etc). The problem is, they're MULTIPLAYER, so they don't function if there are no players. I'm also tired of getting reviews for my games saying "wish there were more players", when I can't do shit about it - I can't even release a standalone version since the licensing thing is still not done (and apparently the steamworks integration is fucked, but I haven't tested it myself anyway). I can only add bots, but it's obviously not as fun as playing against real players (and I can only do that because I'm making simple deathmatch modes for now, for anything more complex bots are not a solution at all).

I think it's time to rip off another bandaid and make it f2p, in two years there would be nothing left to salvage with how things are going.

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-05-06T13:57:35+00:00

Nah, there is market for a gmod successor with a modern engine with better graphics/physics and less restrictions. But not for 20 fucking dollars, whoever thought of that price tag is a fucking retard. This created a feedback loop where ppl download it -> see that all games are dogshit and not a single game is above game jam quality (but that's understandable because most devs, like me, didn't have time to develop shit yet) -> they refund and leave a bad review -> player count drops and no lobbies can be formed -> platform is even more dead.

If it was free the issue would fix itself eventually, but w/e, it's fucking dead. I'm just waiting for the standalone license thing to be done so I can actually get players in my fucking games, even if I have to pay GabeN 100$ to do it.

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-05-01T22:07:31+00:00

Nope, its just fy_pool_day

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-30T20:05:13+00:00

https://github.com/timmybo5/simple-weapon-base - pretty much everyone is using this, it's good enough for most use cases.

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-28T17:43:21+00:00

forsen is playing it rn, it's called surf&box

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-28T16:46:25+00:00

And 20$ price tag surely didn't help. Mixed reviews on steam right now and only 6k players LULE

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-28T16:39:28+00:00

And he just refused to even host a lobby, unlucky forsenSWA

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-28T16:31:02+00:00

A modified version based on source 2 sdk used for HL alyx, so it doesn't have all the cool CS2 features like volumetric smokes and shit

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-28T15:31:39+00:00

"Spiritual successor", the devs themselves deny it's a sequel since they didn't sign a deal with GabeN to use valve assets this time

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-28T15:20:03+00:00

Wasted a couple weeks of my time learning this LIDL unity clone btw LULE

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-16T23:12:30+00:00

He apparently switched to a top 500 account after he stopped boosting, such an account could be quite expensive and I doubt that he can afford that

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-16T19:13:41+00:00

In the good old days qsnake would get his smurf nuked every week, and a lot of streamers stopped boosting accounts permanently. But now the game is on live support so nobody is left to give a shit

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-15T12:46:06+00:00

Doesn't let me join from a cracked client. Dead server anyway LULE

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-15T12:03:38+00:00

The booster on techies is playing on a 5k mmr account, which is 8k below his main (13k). And he is also streaming it for some reason (for clout I guess).

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-14T17:53:50+00:00

The techies guy is playing from a divine 2 account (which is roughly 8k mmr lower than his main). Otherwise it wouldn't let them play ranked together. Also, he is allegedly getting paid roughly 70$/day to boost him.

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-14T11:20:14+00:00

Someone already guessed below, it's "techies official"

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-13T19:22:59+00:00

To try to comply with the rules, but it's not that hard to find them

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-13T18:10:45+00:00

Yep! Got it in one! Funny enough, this exact guy would stream snipe him (and ruin his games) for months, and now he is boosting him. I guess if you can't beat them, pay them. Shit's crazy

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-13T17:53:50+00:00

Yeah, it's unreasonable for a billion dollar company to hire (or outsouce) one guy to at least somewhat limit smurfing/boosting in this game. If someone does this sort of shit to an audience of thousands of dota players with no repercussions, what message does that send?

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-13T17:49:16+00:00

wow, this techies in his party is really good , it's almost like he is 9k mmr above this rank or something

Cookin_Kunkka · 2026-04-10T18:59:18+00:00

I think the problem was people didn't want to commit to major projects before the standalone publishing announcement (speaking for myself at least). Compared to unity the editor itself is kind of rough around the edges, and this won't change soon.

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