“Please bring GMod Tower back”
A Detailed Response
This is a mega-thread detailing our reasoning behind not bringing GMod Tower back.
The purpose of this thread is to make everyone aware of exactly where we stand on this topic.
First let us state the hard facts:
- We are not going to bring back GMod Tower, it has been permanently shut down.
- We will not be releasing any assets or source code from GMTower nor will allow anyone to use them.
- We do not find it flattering when people suggest the idea of building their own replacement GMod Tower.
- We do not enjoy or tolerate others stealing our code or artwork.
Now we’ll address some of the comments we’ve received on the topic of bringing back GMod Tower:
"Why make Tower Unite, why not just keep working on GMod Tower?"
Back when we were working on GMod Tower we did it mainly as a hobby.
Most of the lead developers were high-school / college students and had free time and resources to work on it.
Now that most of us are out of college we need to earn a living.
Rather than take up a job elsewhere, we wanted to continue working on the game we loved.
It was at this point that we decided we wanted to make a new Tower game.
We wanted this new game to build upon what made GMod Tower great, and deliver it outside of Garrysmod.
This decision was partly motivated by the fact that we were hitting most of the limits in the source engine.
We decided to make this new game to build up our company and support ourselves, as we couldn’t survive on donations in the long term.
That’s how Tower Unite was born, and that’s how GMod Tower ended.
We consider Tower Unite the sequel/continuation of GMod Tower.
"Why did you close down GMod Tower?"
We closed down GMod Tower because we wanted to focus all of our development effort on Tower Unite.
GMod Tower required near-constant maintenance and required servers which cost money.
Hosting GMod Tower also required proprietary modules that were difficult to maintain and keep up to date with Garrysmod, and we didn’t want to bear the burden of supporting those anymore.
MacDGuy did a great write-up disclosing the more intimate details surrounding the shutdown of GMod Tower here:
[ANNOUNCEMENT] GMT Server #2 has shut down
"Why won’t you bring GMod Tower back?"
GMod Tower was in direct competition with Tower Unite and we don’t want to have a free version of our game undercutting our sales.
It is our responsibility to ensure the success of Tower Unite, not just for ourselves, but for all of the backers who helped fund its creation.
We promised our backers that we would deliver a complete Tower Unite game by any means necessary.
Because of this, GMod Tower was taken out of the picture.
In addition to all of this, bringing back GMod Tower would be a massive undertaking as we’d need to invest a lot of time into bringing everything up-to-date with Garrysmod. It goes without saying that we have no interest in doing this.
“Why won’t you release the source code / assets and let the community run the game?”
GMod Tower was in direct competition with our game.
If we released the source code it would be like taking 6 years of development and pointing it at ourselves like loaded a gun.
Tower took a lot of time and effort to develop and we don’t want to give it away (for free or for profit) to any would-be competitors.
On top of this, GMod Tower meant a lot to us. It was a accumulation of thousands of hours of work - all done in our spare time. We don’t want others hosting or continuing the project without our permission because it was our passion project.
"But GMod Tower was so much better than Tower Unite"
GMod Tower was the product of over 6 years of development.
We’ve only been developing Tower Unite for roughly 2 years.
We strive to rekindle the spark that made GMod Tower great in everything that we do.
We only ask that you give us time to do that.
For reference, here’s what the first alpha release of GMod Tower looked like and a list of features it had:
Should've kept gmt
"Closing down GMod Tower was a mistake because [x]"
While we appreciate your concern, this rhetoric is of absolutely no use to us.
We’ve already started down this path, and we can’t go back.
We understand that GMod Tower was popular, and that Tower Unite still has some distance to close on that.
But please have faith in us as we continue to push to make Tower Unite even better than GMod Tower was.
It also goes without saying that this kind of statement can be very disheartening for us as developers:
Should've kept gmt
"GMod Tower was free and Tower Unite isn’t, why?"
For over five years, we’ve been providing GMod Tower to our community for free.
We loved working on it, and we loved seeing the incredible amount of feedback from the community.
But we are completely devoted to Tower Unite now and that comes at a cost.
Because we work on full-time now as game developers, we rely solely on the revenue our game generates.
It’s how the developers pay for things like rent, groceries, utility bills, insurance, taxes, etc.
If it had not been for Tower Unite being profitable we would have needed to get jobs doing something else, and Tower as a concept would have died entirely. GMod Tower would have ceased development and hosting completely. Tower Unite is the continuation of GMod Tower.
On another note: Tower Unite is arguably cheaper (and easier to set up) than GMod Tower was.
If you were new to Steam and wanted to get the FULL GMod Tower experience, you would need the following:
- Garrysmod ($9.99)
- Half-life 2 Episode One ($7.99)
- Half-life 2 Episode Two ($7.99)
- Counter Strike: Source ($19.99)
- Total ($45.96)
Plus you’d have to figure out how to mount all of the content properly.
All in all, it took a lot to get into GMod Tower.
With Tower Unite you only have to download the game and run it.
“I want to know more about the transition from GMod Tower to Tower Unite”
Our FAQ from the IndieGoGo campaign provides a detailed glimpse into our thinking around the time we did this.
It is also a record of how the transition took place and what actions were taken. Old Tower Unite Frequently Asked Questions (during Indiegogo)