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Garry's Mod

What Is Garry’s Mod? How Its Sandbox, Addons, and Servers Work

Garry’s Mod is a physics sandbox with open-ended building, community-made gamemodes, Workshop addons, and servers that shape multiplayer sessions.

By VGSources Team 3 min read
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Garry’s Mod is an open-ended physics sandbox for building, experimenting, and playing community-made game modes. It does not have a required campaign or fixed set of goals: you use its tools to spawn objects and turn them into constructions, play alone or with others, or join servers running a different style of game.

How the Garry’s Mod sandbox works

The core activity is experimentation. You spawn objects, manipulate them with tools, and connect them into constructions. You might build something that moves, such as a car or rocket, or arrange objects into a scene. There is no prescribed level-by-level progression; players decide what to make and how to play.

Facepunch describes Garry’s Mod as a physics-based sandbox built on a modified version of Valve’s Source Engine. Its official site listed a September 16, 2026 update that included 64-bit Windows builds and Sandbox improvements. For current compatibility and version details, check the official Garry’s Mod site and the live Steam listing.

Sandbox, gamemodes, addons, and servers: what’s the difference?

Term What it means
Sandbox The open-ended building and physics experience: spawn objects, use tools, and experiment.
Gamemode A set of rules and goals that changes the activity. Steam gives Trouble in Terrorist Town and Prop Hunt as examples of community-created modes.
Addon User-created content, such as maps, models, contraptions, or tools, distributed through Steam Workshop.
Server A shared multiplayer environment that selects a map and gamemode. Operators can also configure Workshop content for players who join.

Valve’s Steam listing describes more than 300,000 Workshop models, maps, and contraptions and says the content is free. That is the publisher’s catalog figure on the store page as accessed October 4, 2026; it can change and is not a count of active players or a separately verified number of unique addons. See the Garry’s Mod Steam page for the current description.

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What changes when you join a server?

The server’s map and gamemode determine the setting and rules of a session; its configured addons can add the content players encounter. This is why two servers can feel like very different games even though both use Garry’s Mod.

Some servers or gamemodes may require other games. Steam names Counter-Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2 as examples, but this is not a requirement for every server. Check the specific server or gamemode description before joining.

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How server operators provide addons

Dedicated server operators can make a Steam Workshop collection available at startup by passing its public or unlisted collection ID. The server downloads and mounts the collection’s addons; maps and Workshop-enabled gamemodes can also be made available to clients when they join. Facepunch’s Workshop for Dedicated Servers guide also documents a configuration-file method for listing addon IDs, introduced in version 2026.09.22 or newer.

Setting up a dedicated server is optional; it is not a prerequisite for playing Garry’s Mod. Facepunch’s dedicated server hosting guide covers installation, choosing a gamemode and map, and setting a Steam Game Server Login Token. The guide says that token is mandatory for server ranking. Facepunch allows private, unofficial, and community servers under its guidelines, with operators responsible for their servers and required to follow the rules.

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Choosing how to play

Decide based on the kind of session you want and what it depends on:

  • Build and experiment: choose Sandbox if you want to make contraptions or explore the physics tools without a preset objective.
  • Play a structured activity: look for a gamemode such as Trouble in Terrorist Town or Prop Hunt, which supplies different rules and goals.
  • Play alone or with others: experiment offline, build cooperatively, or join a server for its particular map and community.
  • Check dependencies first: confirm whether a server expects particular Workshop addons or another game before joining.

The Steam listing showed Garry’s Mod at $9.99 on October 4, 2026. The price and regional availability can change; check the live Steam listing for the current price. Workshop addons are digital content, while running a dedicated server is an optional setup task.

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