A lot of factors can influence a game's review score on Steam: quality, expectations, developer attitudes, and even politics — as we've seen with near-constant review bombing campaigns on this game or that game over the years.
For Garry Newman—creator of Garry's Mod and founder of Facepunch Studios—the reviews of his new game, S&Box, are being pulled towards the negative by people expecting a rehash of Garry's Mod.
Though S&Box is a "spiritual successor" to Newman's original mod, there are notable differences between the two. S&Box doesn't use Source 2 SDK, but rather a proprietary engine built atop Source 2, and the game doesn't have Steam Workshop functionality, which has become a big draw of Garry's Mod since Steam launched the feature.
In a recent update post, Newman broke down the game's reviews and divided them into several categories based on their primary grievance with S&Box.
"Around 35 per cent of the reviews compare the game to Garry's Mod. They point out the differences between S&Box and Garry's Mod, they wish it were more like Garry's Mod. I understand this; they wanted an integration of Garry's Mod onto the Source Engine. [...] I don't think we can win in that...
