 Good evening. You know Gary Newman, the guy who created Gary's mod? Well this week, his worst nightmare has come true. Gary has stated in interviews in the past that for years, the primary thing that motivated him to continue work on Gmod was pure spite and fear for the prospect that a better, more popular mod called JBmod would eventually return. And on October 22nd, 2022, it finally happened. Okay, I know what you're thinking. What in the hell is this? Well you see, this is JBmod, which just launched on Steam last Saturday. For those who aren't familiar, JBmod was the OG Half-Life 2 sandbox mod, designed to reimplement the Fizz gun that was cut from the game, and let people toy around with it on a more stable branch of the engine. It was created by a guy named Jackbox, or JB55. Some people claim it to have been the first Half-Life 2 mod ever, and it genuinely did serve as the inspiration for what we've come to know today as Gmod. However, for about a decade and a half now, there's been a false narrative spread around online about how once Gmod took off, JBmod engaged itself in a pathetic, one-sided war with Gary's mod that they suffered a decidedly humiliating loss in. This isn't really accurate, however. In reality, someone named Snakes, who was a friend of JB55, effectively hijacked the JBmod project and ran what I guess you could call a trolling campaign to mess with people. Long after JB55 abandoned JBmod to go play World of Warcraft, Snakes created a website under the JBmod brand to spread word of an upcoming update that was going to blow Gmod out of the water. He even had drawings and memes made to illustrate just how much Gmod sucked, which have now become infamous in the community. Keep in mind, JB had nothing to do with any of this at all. This upcoming badass JBmod update Snakes was telling people about was pretty much just an inside joke. Very little of it was believed to have actually existed outside of a few screenshots of a revamped hub world. But Snakes' commitment to his joke was so unwavering and aided Gary Newman so much that for a very long time, ensuring JBmod's irrelevance was the driving force that motivated development of Gary's It's very possible that if it weren't for Snakes goofing around, Gmod wouldn't be what it is today. Anyway, much like Gary, a lot of people online didn't know that JBmod's war on Gmod was a joke, and for that reason the mod came to carry a very negative inflammatory reputation. But here's where it gets interesting. A few weeks ago, the truth of the situation was exposed to a wider audience in my good friend Ratlabber's video How an Internet Troll Created Gary's Mod. And almost immediately after this video started making waves, JBmod's social media suddenly started showing new activity for the first time in nearly 10 years. It seemed that Snakes had been alerted to the new wave of attention JBmod was receiving and intended to capitalize on it. The official JBmod YouTube channel, which had laid dormant for ages, suddenly returned with a new announcement video, proclaiming that JBmod's long-awaited update would not only soon be released to the public, but that the game would even have a grand release party to celebrate its launch on Steam. And sure enough, there was a store page for it. This was actually pretty shocking given how long the project had been inactive. It even caught the attention of a couple of news outlets. Additionally, the JBmod webpage seemed to have been completely overhauled, indicating some real effort was being put toward refreshing the game's image. Nobody was entirely sure how much of what Snakes was claiming was true, since the website still had some obvious jokes on it. But it definitely seemed like something was coming. The news of a potential JBmod return even made its way to Gary Newman himself, who put out a tweet reminiscing on his history with the game. I was actually terrified of JBmod when I was making Gary's mod. They always claimed to be just about to make a huge release that would render us redundant. This is one of the reasons I worked so hard for so long to push it forward so it couldn't get caught. JBmod actually did launch on Steam on the 22nd to many people's surprise. And for the most part, it was still pretty much just the same Primitive Half-Life 2 sandbox it was 15 years ago, with only minor changes. In hindsight, the fact that Gary said he was terrified of JBmod until the release of GMod 11 is downright hilarious knowing that this single new map is all the JB team ever actually had to show for their new update. But despite how basic this new release was, in a weird way, JBmod's relaunch was kind of a historic moment. One of the most prolific Source Engine mods of all time was finally made available for the wider public. We got our hands on the new version of the building blocks map that was initially teased God knows how long ago, and for the first time in history, there were multiple servers full of people playing JBmod. Unfortunately though, the experience isn't perfect. For one, despite running on the latest branch of the Source Engine, the game is still pretty unstable and crashes a lot, especially in multiplayer. The new build of the game also doesn't have a sticky bomb launcher which is kind of disappointing. If you didn't know, much like the Fizzgun, the sticky launcher was a weapon present in the Half-Life 2 leak that was re-implemented in JBmod as a fun thing to toy around with. But unfortunately, because its code isn't available in the SDK code base, the only way to implement it in the game without access to developer resources would have been to make use of leaked material, which Valve does not like people doing. In the past, they've turned away even highly anticipated community projects like missing information over it, so I can only assume the sticky bomb launcher's removal from JBmod was necessary to get the game published on Steam, which is kind of a sad sacrifice. Now, as it stands, JBmod is really nothing more than a novelty, but I personally think that with some work, it has potential to be the centerpiece of a legitimate GMod counterculture. Hear me out, obviously nothing can hold a candle to GMod's legacy or its success, and there's just flat out no way that JBmod could make a convert out of any GMod players in its current state. I mean, come on, nobody wants to use this weird-ass weld system or these in-level entity spawners over GMod's tool gun and spawn menu we've come to love, but there's a growing audience of people who are dissatisfied with the state of GMod, for a number of reasons. Some are upset with its server culture, dominated by homogenized pay-to-win forks of DarkRP and TTT, carrying never-ending loading times due to bloated obnoxious add-on lists, and some are upset with the lack of attention the game gets from its devs who have all but moved on to development on their new game, Sandbox. I think if the right team of people got their hands on JBmod and showed some real passion, they could transform it into something that could culminate a real spirited community. An escape, if you will, from some of the bullshit people have come to be frustrated with GMod over. There's always been a small cult of people who find it funny to champion JBmod due to its underdog status, and there's already a seemingly growing community of people who enjoy tinkering with the game by porting stuff from GMod or other games. I think this already-present appeal is telling of the game's potential. My two cents? I think the people behind this new release of JBmod should give it a push as a real GMod alternative. Yeah, it'll obviously never have the same appeal that the big dog does, but then again, is that really a bad thing? People are starting to really hate the way GMod has become synonymous with Zoomer trends like nextbots, and you're in for the days that the community was more niche and source engine oriented. I for one would love to see more of a centralized community form around classic source mod culture, and I see potential for JBmod to be the vehicle that provides that, assuming its creators are up to the task. If it were possible to remake some of the features that make GMod more intuitive in JBmod, I really think the game could shine as a diamond in the rough. Hell, I even saw some people in their Discord tossing around the idea of implementing classic GMod game modes that have been lost to time, like Flood, Surf, or even Jailbreak. That could be awesome. Unfortunately, this is all coming from a place of real naivety on my part. Even if the devs were up for that enormous challenge, none of what I've described seems to be possible at the moment, since Valve apparently isn't willing to give engine access to the JBmod team at this time. And hey, I can't blame them too much for that. After all, most of the world is convinced that JBmod is nothing but a game made to pose ragdolls in sexual positions. But I like to think that if enough eyes reach this project, and if enough support is shown for it and the people who work on it, anything is possible. So if anything you've heard in this video sounds interesting to you, go check out JBmod and its community today, and help celebrate its legacy. This is more fun to be had than you might think. Hi, I'm Richter in post and I'm really sick so I'm sorry about my voice. While I was working on this video, some stuff came to my attention that I'd like to share with you. One, a JBmod TikTok video came out that writes, the reason the sticky bomb launcher was removed was because Valve's lawyers quote, threatened my family's life. Two, the point of the plane in the map is apparently to weld canisters on it and then shoot them and watch the plane fly around in the sky. You can see this in the ancient Lambda tests JBmod promotional video. And three, there's a hidden weapon called the leaf blower which you can spawn by going in the console and writing give weapon leaf blower. It just pushes props around. I think this GIF in the latest JBmod video is supposed to be some kind of proposed redesign for it. You can adjust the force of its push using the convar leaf blower underscore force. I like to set it to a ridiculously high value and push myself around in the plane using it. Additionally, all the cheatlocked Half-Life 2 weapons like the briefcase, the Annabelle, and the cubemap tests are also available in JBmod if you know the right commands. Thanks for watching my video. I hope you enjoyed it and have a good day. Hashtag JBmod sweep.