Facepunch Studios’ Garry’s Mod, a standalone game based off of the acclaimed Half Life 2 mod, has sold 10 million copies. Creator Garry Newman confirmed on Twitter that the 10 millionth copy was sold over New Year’s.

When you consider how well Garry’s Mod has done since its inception as a free mod – along with helping to create famous mods like Trouble in Terrorist Town and Prop Hunt – this is big news indeed. The standalone version of the game essentially kick-started the creation of Facepunch Studios which has also brought out the sandbox survival title Rust, another best-seller.

A follow-up to Garry’s Mod has already been announced but it may be a long time till it actually releases. At the very least we know that it won’t be called Garry’s Mod 2.

What are your thoughts on the success of Garry’s Mod? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for more information on the sequel in the coming months.

To PC gamers who are into modding, either creating or downloading, and generally just into user created tools, this will come as great news. Mixamo has just released a brand new update in the form of a direct download feature that will enable anyone creating a 3D character with the latest version of its character creator software Fuse (which just launched today on Steam), and animating it with its Animations, to import those characters straight into Source Filmmaker and Garry’s Mod.

“Gabe Newell noted in a Reddit AMA earlier in 2014 that the biggest improvements [to its engine technology] will be in increasing productivity of content creation. Today’s feature release is the realization of that concept for the creation of game characters,” said Stefano Corazza, CEO of Mixamo. “Our entire pipeline is predicated on the same notion that user-generated content should be easy to create and get into games. We’ve now simplified that process for the tens of thousands of developers and modders using the Source engine and for the over 6 million users of Garry’s Mod. As far we know, we’re the first-ever 3D modeling and animation service to do so.”

This is certainly great news to all PC players who are more enterprising and creative, and it should be a boon to the PC gaming community as well. Remember, some of the most popular PC games of all time- Counter Strike, DayZ, League of Legends- all started out as mods originally.

Facepunch Studios has a bit of a controversy on its hands. The developer, which has been busy with online sandbox survival title Rust, revealed that it was developing a new game – namely the twin stick arcade shooter Riftlight. Needless to say, many fans didn’t take too kindly to the fact that Facepunch was working on a new game while Rust is still in alpha

Studio head and Garry’s Mod creator stepped in though and asked the Internet to collectively calm down.

“Are we crazy? Are we doing it wrong? Should every person in the company be working on the same thing? Should HBO make one TV show at a time? Should Warner Brothers make one movie at a time?

“Our strategy at the moment is to hire talented people to make the games they want to play. We’re not asking you to fund this. We’re not starting a kickstarter and begging you for money – we’re funding it.

“We are spending money Rust and Garry’s Mod make to do this. Arguing that we should be re-investing that money back into only those games is like telling apple they can’t spend the money they made from iPhone and Macs to fund the development of the iPad. Keep in mind that we spent money Garry’s Mod made to develop Rust – and that turned out pretty good, right? Or should Helk and Pat have been working on Garry’s Mod all that time?

“I think a good company develops continually, and the more things we’re working on the better. I think this strategy is working out for us so far. I guess this is one of the issues we’re going to face with open development. I am guessing that a lot of game developers bigger and smaller than us have multiple prototypes in the works, but they aren’t showing them to you. The only thing that makes our situation remarkable is that we’re willing to talk about our process and show our experiments.”

Thoughts? Let us – and Garry – know in the comments.

Garry’s Mod or GMod may have been popular and propelled creator Garry Newman into success. According to the man himself, Facepunch Studios’ newest creation Rust has already generated 40 percent of GMod’s 9 year sales total. In less than five weeks. While being in the Alpha state. We kid you not.

Speaking to Games Industry International about the success, Newman stated that, “We never, ever expected anything to dwarf GMod’s success. 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. We can’t really believe it.”

Newman also commented on the harsh nature of Rust’s player vs. player sandbox environment, which often rewards those who kill other players rather than making nice with them. “The first thing people do is run around and try and bash people’s heads in with a rock! They want to try and get items and build a camp. Then, after a while they simmer down and realize that they kind of need to work with other people, that if they help someone out they’ll help them back. It goes back and forth like that.

“I suppose when someone’s kind to you in the game it stands out a lot more than when someone tries to kill you, because it doesn’t happen as often. It’s a lot harder to be kind to people than to just kill them and take all their stuff. You can get a lot of satisfaction from giving someone trust and not having it thrown back in your face.”

Rust is currently available on Steam for PC, Mac OS X and Linux. Have you had the pleasure of murdering innocents to survive? Let us know in the comments below.

Garry Newman, the creator of Garry’s Mod has revealed on Twitter that the mod has sold 1.4 million units. It’s pretty impressive that the mod is so much popular, and the sales are well deserved. Newman also released a sales history of the mod which shows accurate numbers.

Garry’s Mod is a physics sandbox. Unlike regular games there aren’t any predefined aims or goals. We give you the tools and leave you to play. You spawn objects and weld them together to create your own contraptions – whether that’s a car, a rocket, a catapult or something that doesn’t have a name yet – that’s up to you.

Fantastic achievement and they broke the 1 million sales milestone in July last year. Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Also, do check out the chart Newman provided below.

Click to enlarge: