Rust Community Update 262 was titled FACEPUNCH'S 15TH BIRTHDAY! which was posted 16th July 2024.

The post states: "Rewind to 2009, when Garry, released Garry's Mod: a sandbox game with no rules, from a mod, to officially listing it on Steam." This might mislead the reader into thinking that Gmod (either the mod version or the standalone release) was published in 2009, when in reality the original mod was released in December 2004, and the Standalone release was published in November 2006. The post may also mislead people into thinking that Facepunch was only 15 years old, when it had existed for about 20 years (since the Windows XP era).

Facepunch Studios Ltd as a company was incorporated in March 2009, while the Facepunch website (in July 2024) noted that it was "alive for 19.5 years" which would date its foundation to around the time Gmod was born (~Dec 2004). The wikipedia page for Facepunch goes a bit further, stating that it was "founded in June 2004" (now a good 20 years ago).

Garry's Mod (developed by Facepunch Studios and published by Valve) was one of the early games on Steam; one of Gmod's most popular gamemodes (Stranded) was more or less recreated by Facepunch with a larger map (in a release now referred to as Rust Legacy) which Facepunch had published themselves on Steam in 2013.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3291824620

Both Gmod and Rust were popular; they were released at a time when the Steam userbase was growing but the platform had relatively few games. Facepunch clearly understood the value of preserving player-freedom (despite the wild culture that can emerge with such freedom), as their games have enjoyed a sense of longevity owing to what felt like unrestricted gameplay. Importantly, they also properly maintained their games over the years, while so many classics have sadly been left to the onslaught of technological entropy.

• https://web.archive.org/web/20240718104159/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facepunch_Studios
  
• https://web.archive.org/web/20240718104248/https://facepunch.com/

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