http://Gmod.biZ
Gmod.biZ
gmod biz / biZ
[Gmod.biZ]
"Your Garry's Mod Community #1!" (Steam group)
"Your friendly community!" (Forum)


Computer22 played Counter-Strike: Source and took an interest in running a server. He came across Slotbox-Gaming which offered "cheap server hosting" but was being run single-handedly. He got involved and spent a few months helping them run a CS:S server. He moved into Garry's Mod in 2008 which was rising in popularity at the time, and he enjoyed playing the Stranded gamemode.

Someone with experience in running a company helped him set up Ideal-Hosting UG, which Computer22 would use to host servers in Garry's Mod. He founded the http://Gmod.biZ community, and likely helped by his experience from CS:S he launched a Cider RP server in 2009. CitizenDog would join as a community staff member and general manager of Ideal-Hosting.

Early on there were donation rewards for the Downtown server which would last for 1 month at a time, including physgun and prop spawning abilities, and a heart next to the players name in chat. BizRP had a VIP system. Later, the donations would be treated as products, for example the HL2RP server had a Rebel Flag that when purchased would allow the customer to spawn resistance uniforms.

Downtown
The earliest mention of the Downtown server was in a Steam group comment from Oct 2009, but it possibly predates the group itself (founded July 2009). It ran the map rp_downtown_v2 and had a functioning economy. Confusingly it was known by many names - sometimes listed as eXtreme RP, referred to as Cidermod, abbreviated as [xRP], mistaken for DarkRP, and on this page I'll call it either Cider RP or Downtown.

The initial server was popular in 2009 and 2010, and easily one of the best of its kind because it actually had some lite roleplay. Jobs were unlocked by logging a few hours of playtime, as opposed to DarkRP servers that used a voting system (which could be abused by cliques). Most of the similar servers at the time focused on player-killing, while fights on this server tended to have some roleplay context, based on things like fun hostage situations where players would refrain from killing, and were discouraged (by the rules) from committing murder during raids, which was coupled with an auto-kick limit of around 7 kills per hour, making it one of the most strict servers against violence. The server saw a few events.

Build
The build server was a typical sandbox gamemode where players tinkered with things or duplicated a saved creation, sometimes doing some racing with Jeeps. A couple of videos give a very rough server timeline from their upload dates (11th Nov 2009 ~ 25th July 2010) on gm_construct.

Stranded
First mentioned in a comment on 6th December 2009, the Stranded server gameplay focused on working your way up the technology chain from primitive axes, to guns. Most of the players just peacefully grinded away on mining/woodcutting, with some forming tribes that had their own respawn point. Computer22 notes of the gamemode "there were lots and lots of modifications, and it used a version of stranded that was never public. DrTight wrote it."

There were around 50 Stranded maps in the community files, although the server only seemed to use a few of them (including gms_sunset_v1). Typing !rank in chat showed your rank and points, and you could own a pet headcrab. One of the server's rules stated: "Killing low levels is highly frowned upon." Which speaks to the general Gmod.biZ community culture of aiming to be welcoming to new players. It was likely monetized by a VIP system.

ToBadForYou said it was "just like any other Stranded." Although it's not clear if he was talking about the particular version of the gamemode or the player culture of the server. When I asked Computer22 about the culture of it, he said: "I was actually very active for a long time, of course mostly people playing for themselves, leveling up, but I'd describe it as friendly and polite most of the time. For new players it was sometimes tough, but then if you had the right buddy to start with it was great."

Garry had visited the Gmod.biZ Stranded server, and when Facepunch Studios later released Rust (in late 2013) I felt it was strikingly similar, and may have been inspired by Stranded. It was last mentioned in a comment in Jan 2013.

GeoForts
I remember seeing something about this server, probably on the forum, but it wasn't a significant one. It probably was tried, but maybe not as a public server. A comment on the Steam group references it in Feb 2010. A video showing the gamemode included a description of it as a "capture the flag type game where you get 5 minutes to build and then five minuted to fight. then the cycle repeats. the only things you get to work with. is 5 different blocks. and the physics gun! no welding, no snapping, no stacker, NOTHING!"

BizRP
Known by a few names (BizRP / PERP / literp) was running from atleast 2nd June 2010, and used the map rp_evocity_v33x. It was nearly always populated, and had dedicated staff running things like driving tests. The content pack was shared on 2nd July 2010 (which was available through the biZ website) and had a dedicated windows installer.

In announcements it was described: "It's actually a remade and highly expanded perp" and: "Over 17 Cars are waiting for you. Plant drugs, get friends here and group up. Earn tons of money and buy the car you like. Buy weapons and craft things you can sell to other people." Computer22 streamed gameplay events of it on livestream.com/gmod_tv before streaming was common.

Firefighters could earn money extinguishing the fires that spawned randomly; paramedics were automatically alerted to characters that needed medical attention, and the police department was one of "the most interesting", involving police chases. It sounded like parking tickets were a point of drama, while farming weed to sell it to NPCs was a major source of income that could be spent on weapons (which could be lost) and cars (which were permanently owned, but might need to be repaired if damaged).

ToBadForYou said of it: "2010 biz had good community, gamemode was basically default PERP1.5 - biz was always more strict than S.E - you could literally be banned for any reason really" and that it "got harsher" over time. Computer22 says that the VIP status probably included the physgun, and that it wasn't "pay to win." Out of all their Gmod servers it ran the longest; had the most events; had the most YouTube videos uploaded, and was mentioned in announcements made on 153 separate days.

The server had high levels of activity in the summers of 2011, 2012, and 2013. By the end of 2011 it had 35,304 unique players. It had a revival (possibly from March 2014) with a Steam group comment from April 2014 mentioning: "BizRP is not available anymore. We have setup a new server using PERP instead". There was another PERP relaunch on 5th Feb 2015, with a final mention in an announcement on 21st March 2015.

Theater / Cinema
We watched some football in the Theater server in summer of 2010. It wasn't particularly popular, but the community had a unique cinema map for it, and two of maps in the community files were Cinema_Theatron and gmodbiz_cinema_v12. Last mentioned in an announcement on 11th Jan 2013.

Flood
A video shows the Flood server from as early as 17th August 2010. It was a basic version of the gamemode (called Faintlink's Flood), offering a few props to use as a boat, and tools to make the props float. The starting weapon was a pistol, and a crowbar was used to propel the boat around the maps that offered some cover. You'd earn money by damaging enemy boats, and could spend the money on better weapons.

I believe the Gmod.biZ Flood playercount was low compared to other gamemodes, and slightly lower compared to other popular Flood servers. Although you didn't need many players on Flood to have fun, and Computer22 said the playercount was "medium at all times. There were a couple of VERY active players." The map fm_acrid was run, and among the community map files were also flood_oldcanals, fm_bigtank_v2, fm_fishtank, and fm_wewks. Last mentioned in a comment in Jan 2012.

Racer
Launched on 1st August 2010, each player drove a Half-Life 2 Jeep in short races, where finishing ahead of other players earned you prize money that could be spent on permanent car upgrades for speed, health, and some weaponry. The upgrades would visually appear on your car. It saw as many as 22 cars in a race.

There were atleast 16 Racer maps in the community files, mostly circuits that lacked textures, with about 3 of them being Destruction Derby style stadiums, and one particular map (gmr_bowserscastle_v2) had textures. Beyond August 2010, it wasn't mentioned again until an announcement from 21st March 2011 relaunching it, and had a link to the content pack in a rar file. Last mentioned in a comment on Sept 2011.

Trouble in Terrorist Town
The Trouble in Terrorist Town gamemode was hugely popular in 2012, and many communities attempted to run it.

Interestingly, the biZ TTT server was attempted before the wave of popularity - mentioned only once in a Steam group comment on 1st July 2011. There were a few TTT maps in the community files, and Computer22 said that if it had been run, it was for a short time.

HL2RP launch & maps
Launched 11th June 2010 on City 45 with the Metro Police Force (MPF) consisting of staff and veteran players, it switched to rp_c18_v1 by 19th June. Hunter worked on a biZ version of a map, launched on 26th March 2011 called rp_city45_biz_v2. The 13th Jan 2013 relaunch reused that rp-city45-biz-v2 map (similar to rp_tb_city45_v02n). The maps (City 45 and City 8) could feel big with our modest playercount, and they had dead-ends - which could make it hard to escape from Civil Protection.

HL2RP culture
An announcement for it read "This server is totally serious rp. If you can't rp - don't join. Thanks." The server was sometimes full, and a ratio of the playerbase were new to serious roleplay, some having joined from the Downtown server, but brought with them a willingness for interactive roleplay, with little to no powertripping, and the culture not being tainted by an economy-focused item-collecting mindset (somewhat due to how skeletal the structure was, we simply didn't have many items).

The roleplay was theatrical, melee fights were mostly meta, while firefights often used the shoot-to-miss rule (which could be awkward). Killing players was somewhat frowned upon, and executions were generally turned into events. MPF characters were not banned on death (PKs), as their role was to help faciliate storylines, while PKs did sometimes apply to anti-citizens. Combine locks were used on select doors; there were no weather effects. We only used Dispatch for immersion, while High Command officers led Civil Protection characters, which could join teams such as Union or Jury.

The lore was fairly general; we didn't have strict rules, and the overall structure was pretty loose. These aspects gave us great freedom to create roleplay and let it flow uninterrupted in many directions. The rebel scene was small and only saw flashes of activity, but their base was left in peace by the MPF.

The initial server needed to be reopened on 29th Jan 2011, and was last mentioned in Aug 2011. Two fan groups were made, and a relaunch took place around 13th Jan 2013, along with a Treasure Hunt event, although events were rare. Last mentioned in an announcement on 14th Feb 2013.

DarkRP
The popularisation of Gmod may have motivated this return of the Downtown server (although it changed from Cidermod to DarkRP). It was announced on 1st Sept 2013: "Try DarkRP 2.5.0 - Vanilla DarkRP showing FPtjes latest version." It held a build competition on 8th December 2013. Compared to the culture of the earlier Cider RP era, the re-run was described as being "less mature - DarkRP literarilly attracts kids." A server banner noted that it had M9K and NGII PRINTERS. It was last mentioned (in a way that implied it was still running) in a comment on a Gmod.biZ Steam group announcement on 31st Dec 2013.

Deathrun
The initial Deathrun server was mentioned in an announcement on 18th Oct 2010 but wasn't mentioned again until a relaunch 4 years later (24th August 2014), and was last mentioned on 5th Nov 2014.

GreenShift
An announcement from 5th November 2011 stated: "New Server: Green Shift! Test & Enjoy it!" and included information about the contentpack and IP. Another announcement a few days later read: "Let's all get together and have a good old fashioned Garry's Mod deathmatch with killing and stabbing and shooting and maiming galore. Maybe you'd like to try a HK G36C with a red-dot scope and grenade launcher attachment? Or perhaps you're more of the type of person that enjoys a Steyr MP7 Light Machine Gun with the Red Dot Sight to kill people at close quarters? Whatever your killing method, we've got it at Gmod.biZ GreenShift server."

The gameplay of it was probably (like Green Shift under another community) a round-based team-deathmatch (Rebels vs Combine) gamemode, with an objective for teams to fight over a computer console which would "download data". Players could pick their weapon loadout, and add attachments such as scopes. Apart from those 2 announcements, it was never mentioned again on Gmod.biZ.

CiRP
One announcement in Feb 2012 revealed a CIRP Beta, and another stated: "CiRP Server Opening - Get a new RP-Life! Semi-Serious server! - This RP is based on Cider, modified by Lexi (Applejack) and now we are hosting it. It's pretty awesome and includes a lot of uniique features."

Zombie Survival
A Zombie RP server was mentioned in Steam group comment in Jan 2011, but there's no further information about it.

The Zombie Survival server itself was first mentioned on 8th June 2012, and last mentioned a couple of weeks later on 27th June.

An announcement from 31st Aug 2014 read "Today we bring you a new gamemode made by ThomasFN called Zombie Survival Abyss". But was never mentioned again.

FortWars
The Darkspider FortWars server had apparently opened for a short time at an unknown date. The gameplay was similar to GeoForts or SourceForts, involving a build phase and a combat phase where teams would try to protect their gravity ball, with an alternate version involving the hiding of a certain prop. The phys and tool guns were used for construction, and the guns were from Counter-Strike: Source. There were 30 FortWars maps in the community files dated from 2012 and 2013.

Other servers
Other maps in the community files included Surf maps, but these apparently would have only appeared in Deathrun (if at all). The files included several gamemodes that probably weren't run under Gmod.biZ.

Community culture
The Gmod biZ forum had atleast 33,878 posts which was a lower member/post ratio compared to the more serious-roleplay styled nebulous forum activity. But Computer22 reflects that the biZ forum "stats were fairly impressive." Gmod.biZ had a Teamspeak 3 server, but I don't recall it ever being a critical part of playing on the servers. They also had an IRC channel, first mentioned on 5th Dec 2011. Computer22 gave away a lot of Steam games as prizes through Gmod biZ over the years, perhaps hundreds.

Mentioned in some Gmod.biZ group announcements, gmod.eu offered server hosting. Computer22 explains that it had "3 or 4 dedicated servers at its peak - lots of small servers where friends just built together, but also small-med communities. Never big communities, they always hosted on dedis." There was also a Gmod biZ phone app, which he describes: "it was just a whitelabeled [Windows] app that would show the forum - what was really helpful was the ressource pack installer that someone wrote [that would] install the bizrp content pack all automatically, that was great."

Community staff included Herath, Mathias as a developer, and Stuvi among others, and were a friendly bunch. Many of the headstaff were German, so much of the writing in this English-speaking community was in a second language. I'd often felt that the genuinely passionate announcements made in semi-broken English had an endearing quality to them. An announcement from 1st April 2011 stated that Gmod.biZ had been sold to a Russian investor, and that "Gmod.biZ will be under strict Russian guidance from the 4.04.2011." But only an hour later he "was killed during a Vodka festival."

Absorbing Storm-Effect
Gmod.biZ (probably Ideal-Hosting UG to be exact) apparently acquired Storm-Effect by 16th July 2011, but it's not clear if Gmod.biZ used any of its assets. Storm-Effect had been running HL2RP and PERP servers.

Gmod.biZ offered email hosting before 2013, and were involved (if only briefly) in various games beyond Gmod in some capacity from 2010 to atleast 2021, including Minecraft, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Terraria, Team Fortress 2, Battlefield 3, DayZ, Arma 2, GTA 5, and PubG.

Rule enforcement could be very strict, consistently banning for any Banme comments. The staff had higher standards than other communities for the time, probably due to the admin age requirement. Over the years, other roleplay servers did catch up to the standard, and some large ones (perhaps marginally) overtook biZ in terms of consistency as they aimed to become highly professional when tackling moderation of busy (chaotic) servers, which I think was achieved thanks to a slow build up of experienced veteran staff. Gmod.biZ remained fairly casual in comparison to this later period - feeling more like a family (but still enforced their rulesets ofcourse).

The http://Gmod.biZ Steam group seemed to automatically invite players that had visited a biZ server, so the biZ Steam group had a far higher number of members compared to other communities. This made it difficult to find actual members of the community in the group because it was saturated with thousands of players that had simply accepted the group invite but weren't actually invested into the community.

While the community appeared large, the regular playerbase was still like a small family that often behaved themselves. The culture wasn't like other large communities that were more chaotic and needed to enforce strict moderation to maintain a sense of order.

If a staff member went inactive then they would quickly have their powers revoked. Computer22 related a story about why this was done: "in the first week of running a gmod community - I gave someone admin access to a bulletin board and they wiped everything."

An announcement from 6th Sept 2011 explained an unusual problem: "During earth moving work a fibre cable was damaged. Theirfor all traffic had to be routed over other network parts. The lags etc are the result of that."

Gmod.biZ vs Garry
From as early as 2011 there was beef between Garry and Gmod biZ. Someone placed advertising signs outside the door of the Facepunch office, which was captured on a security camera livestream. At some point, Garry was said to have been spawnkilled on the Gmod biZ Stranded server. Garry called out Gmod biZ for using a fake playercounter, and "accidentally" replaced the blue Gmod logo on something he was working on to the orange Gmod biZ logo. Computer22 said of Garry that they ended up in "a good relationship".

Attacks
On 14th Jan 2011 the Gmod.biZ servers suffered a DRDoS attack, and on 19th Feb 2011 there was a DDoS attack. Attacks would be common, and their lengths ranged from "10 seconds to 2 weeks" long.

In response to the attacks Gmod.biZ looked into legal action and offered rewards for information about the attackers. One announcement from Aug 2012 declared that "We have press charges against "Unknown" a few months ago." Other announcements referenced moments when the DDoSers parents had been called.

Cider RP challenges
There was a constant stream of disruptive players that kept the ban request/appeal section of the forum busy, sometimes involving prop-killing. One player cheated to spawn money and shared it with a circle of friends.

There was a golden era from 2009 until around July 2010 where the server was outstanding with high levels of lite roleplay, but the best roleplayers started leaving, and the server playerbase largely collapsed as the gameplay quality dropped. The last mention of that initial run was in a Steam group announcement from a 3rd Jan 2012. The DarkRP re-run in 2013 didn't match the quality of the golden era.

Build challenges
Players could use turrets to kill other players. I think there was a restriction for how quickly you could spawn props, so if you tried to make too many props in a short space of time then all your props would be instantly removed. One of the times I made a detailed race track on it (these were popular and would spark races) I got near to finishing it, but accidentally hit that anti-spam system and all of my props disappeared.

Stranded challenges
One of the rules stated: "Steal food to refill your hunger, not your health. If it is deemed you are stealing excessively just to cause distress to other players, you will be punished." But while trolls weren't a common problem, and by the rules they were the ones that should have been punished, you could get kicked for defending your base from them. The maps had sometimes ran out of trees, and wood was likely an important resource. Computer22 said of the problem that: "a re-planting mechanism was added later."

GeoForts challenges
The build/combat phase gameplay had a cult following in similar gamemodes, but they lacked the wider popularity of the city roleplay gamemodes. The GeoForts server was not a significant one (if it even ran at all).

Flood challenges
The Flood server suffered from prop-pushers, exploiters, trucers, and rambos, often needing an admin to ensure matches were fair. Although even if the rules were followed, a rich player could easily destroy a new player. A Steam group comment from March 2011 reported that "the flood server is stuck on de_inferno" for a week.

Gmod Racer challenges
There was significant input delay on the cars, and winning races was based on how rich you were. You only earned money if you finished a race in a good position, so it was impossible to earn money to buy car upgrades if you were new and up against richer players. Joining races simply made the winners earn more prize money. So the gameplay was pretty flawed beyond the few days after launch, although there weren't many racing games on Steam at the time.

Theater / Cinema challenges
The stream site used to show World Cup football matches on the server was pulled down by Sky Deutschland AG. A YouTube video showing the server while a World Cup match was being streamed had been embedded on the stream site, which was given a copyright strike.

HL2RP challenges
The benefits of intro quiz were debatable, as it didn't stop trolls, and there were a number of comments on the HL2RP announcements from players struggling with the questions - leaving them unable to play on the server.

The loose structure could lead to difficulties in large scale roleplay, placing a reliance on certain people to entertain citizens. For example - workshift events could only be set up if a Civil Protection player had PET flags and enough spare tokens to build a workshop and pay the citizens.

The resistance leader needed to buy a Rebel Flag to be able to spawn resistance uniforms, and this flag was lost if their character died. As a result it was uncommon to see rebels on the server, so a chunk of roleplay was nearly always missing, and fights between Civil Protection and the resistance were rare. The community lacked a proper bridge between the playerbase and actual development, so rebel roleplay was almost totally stagnant.

Prop spawning and phys guns were restricted and needed purchasing, and also costed in-game tokens to spawn. Someone with the prop-spawning ability using the wrong prop would lead to their prop-spawning access being revoked. This caused props to be an uncommon sight - making it more difficult for players to express themselves and create immersive roleplay.

The way Blackmarket Flags worked possibly made guns too difficult to obtain, which may have contributed to corruption. One admin used noclip to hide guns outside the map, while another transferred guns between characters and started clawing at excuses to ban players they didn't like.

BizRP / PERP challenges
On BizRP there was a time when the founder went around the city with an entourage raiding many of the players, and was seemingly unstoppable. The playerbase saw this as being too heavy-handed, and after some complaints the founder apologized for the raiding.

BizRP was often described as PERP, but the founder didn't want people calling it PERP. This was ironic, because it looked like PERP, and the Gmod.biZ forum section for it at some point read General PERP Discussion. An auto-kicker was added which kicked players using the word PERP in chat. The Streisand effect started immediately as kicked players went around Gmod complaining that they were "kicked from the gmod biz PERP server for saying PERP."

The data for biZ was reset on 10th December 2012, which (if that meant resetting money, items, and cars) likely annoyed a ratio of the playerbase. Updates to Garry's Mod over the years would break the functionality of the gamemode, which was described as a reason for it ending.

The end of the community
Some of the servers enjoyed periods of success, and many ex-members have fond memories of their varied gamemode experiences, but each server had come and gone like waves. The community gained a huge number of members in the summer of 2010, but activity trailed off after 2013. Several of the HL2RP players moved to Divine Circles, with a few moving to LemonPunch. For its time Gmod.biZ had stood out despite its imperfections.

On 7th Jan 2017 an announcement read "Partnering with Monolith" which mentioned that Stuvi had moved there as a Senior Administrator. The Monolith Servers culture has similarities to what Gmod biZ as a city roleplay experience run like a business, and populated by a polite community. Gurrazor commented on the announcement: "Completely custom gamemode coded from scratch, so not quite PERP - but it has many similar elements for sure!"

Computer22 was clearly passionate about technology, enjoyed playing on the servers, and said that his favourite was BizRP because it "showed what could be done in Garry's Mod." Eventually he wanted to move on to other projects, and on 16th Aug 2017 he offered to sell the Gmod biZ domain. He stayed in the technology/entertainment industry to do things like TV advertising, and as a hobby still tinkers with the Gmod.biZ Discord group and a Minecraft server. The Discord group was running by atleast 2017, and had 50 members by Feb 2021.

The http://Gmod.biZ Steam community group was founded on 4th July 2009, and had over 25,000 members:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/gmod_biz

Their forum had 8,500 members, but was down by Jan 2021:
https://forum.gmod.biz/

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