"Understanding the Play Fund"

You want to know how money works on sbox.game — paid DLC? Store price? Why retention features keep getting recommended.

There is no paid-games storefront on the platform. On-platform revenue is the Play Fund: a daily pool (order-of-magnitude ~$1M/yr after the Steam launch) split across games/maps by clamped individual player-hours (secret algorithm; clamping means botting/idling doesn't pay).

Payouts are discretionary per the EULA ("Creators do not have any right to compensation") — upside, not a business plan.

How it pays

• $100 minimum balance, paid monthly mid-month.
• Payment details in profile settings; revenue splittable across team members (org membership not required for a split).
• Maps are separate packages — a standalone map gets its own ident and can earn independently of the game.

Eligibility

• No copyrighted material.
• No "repackaging someone else's work with no real creativity."
• sbox.game cloud assets are implicitly licensed and fine.
• Publish Wizard shows a per-cloud-asset eligibility/license check — heed it.

Practical product implication

Revenue tracks session hours → retention features (loops, daily reasons to return, multiplayer stickiness, content cadence) are the monetization features. Store-page completeness still matters for discovery into those hours (pre-publish-checklist-sbox-game).

Standalone Steam export is a different economic path (Steam's cut, no Play Fund platform services) — standalone-steam-export.

Exact pool size / clamp curve: treat public figures as approximate; algorithm is secret (needs verification) against current Facepunch posts when you care about cents.

The fund pays for attention that isn't fake-idle. Clamping and eligibility rules push creators toward original, retainable play — which is why "make people stay" and "make money on sbox.game" collapse into the same design problem.