We're trying to figure out the multiplayer tab on the menu. It's live on the staging branch right now if you want to take a look.. We want to iterate on it quickly to fix broken stuff and make it all make sense.
It's divided into 3 sections right now.
Server List
Your standard server list, grouped by games.
Party List
A list of open parties that are waiting for players. Basically someone is saying "I want to play this game, lets get together and play it".
Global Chat
A top level 250 person chat room where people looking for a game can chat together and advertise their party to ask people to join.
Does this make sense? Is there something else we should be doing? Is it broken?
Global chat sounds like a great idea to get strangers partying up. I think having a share button for friends that you can send out of steam e.g. discord to the games profile would be great too. Wanted to send one to a mate yesterday outside of steam and realised that was missing.
needs a scroll option, when you click on too many game servers the "active games" tab gets pushed out of the screen, maybe also when you're partied up with other players display their player model in the lobby?
edited:
maybe a spam/basic language filter for the global chat/option to mute players aswell? player search function in the playerlist, a sound. notification when players join your lobby. a visible scroll bar on the global chat. time stamp for messages if you right click them? if you click out of the multiplayer chat the global chat completely wipes, maybe keep the history until you close sbox?
when moving the tabs around it wipes the global chat history aswell.
1. Voice works 2. "choose game" tab folds on player party icons 3. Chat deletes after exit, and could have timestamps 4. when player clicked, bring to steam profile.. add intermediary ui element
Overall really good for the platform. Optional global voice channel would be fun.
Probably good that it's back not sure how i feel about it being sorted by players.
Party
I feel like the whole join / open party mechanism could be automated:
Party Leader: - Sets games(s) / genres(s) they want to play or just any game - Sets maximum amount of people for party.
Player LFG: - Sets games(s) / genres(s) they want to play or just any game - Clicks find match button -> gets into a party
Most multiplayer games (CS, Dota, Valorant, Tarkov...) have automated matchmaking idk why we would force users to scroll through endless lists of parties by hand.
The whole thing should have region / ping filtering as well.
Selecting a game to play
Should allow me to select from my favorites. Should allow me to select a game from anywhere(e.g. discovery page), because the modal that pops up is shit.
Chat seems like a gimmick, i have my doubts it will actually be too useful.
Scaling
This all looks fairly decent with jsut 10 players. We should make sure it als oloosk good with potentially thousand of players. - Is the chat rate limited? - Will the parties scroll by to quickly? - Should be able to set a cap on my party size
I think other simple additions would be social flavour.
1. Certain emojis, to comment n a chat message like discord. so if ppl talk shit, give them a poo. nothing crazy. 2. DK mentioned flags of country next to name in chat 3. probably too far.. but simple behavior rating system on players, red, green, yellow or something, So people manage them selves better. Red = Lame , Yellow = Meh, Green = OG .. something like that 4. The public party visibility was playing up, could be a version mismatch or synch.
This is great. My input is its weird that clicking on someones username instantly takes me to their steam profile website URL.
Can we just get a small in-game context menu with options for: -Send Party Invite -View S&box Profile -View Steam Account
Its easier to just quickly send someone a party invite. I dont want to have to go and fully add them as a steam friend before we play sbox games as a party. Also it'd be nice to quickly view someones S&box profile to see what their favorite games are and achievements, etc. Thats a good bonus way for players to discover games.Screenshot 2026-10-01 005629.png340.51 KB
The padding is really weird in the chat. The author name should basically have no padding in this picture.2026-10-01_09-53-22.jpg11.39 KBWhen you join a party, there's no way to discuss with your party leader what to play. If the party leader is looking at a game, you have no idea what it is until he actually starts playing it. When you as a party member are looking at a game, there's no way for you to suggest "hey let's play this"590830_20261001095431_1.png909.64 KBWhen you're joining a game together, the loading box blocks the party chatimage.png211.23 KBWhile you're on the multiplayer page, there are two party chats. Both the one on the right and the default one seems to be active at the same time.image.png756.99 KBThese could be game specific issues: The first game we tried to play failed because it was apparently a Friends Only lobby. The second game we tried to play (my game) had the party chat overlapping with the in-game chat.s&box - 2026-10-01 10-07-13 AM.mp43.71 MBedit: Also it would be nice if you could right click people in the global chat and invite, block or show profile right there.
Also additionally. It sucks that global chat history completely restarts as empty if I switch tabs. It should be persistent. Maybe the last 25-50 messages or so always persist.
multiple tabs for each games server list feels weird. My first instinct was to click a back button next to the search box 8c3615e1-712b-4c3e-bc7d-1c069d035a48.png57.93 KBI love the idea of a global chat for this. While not related to the multiplayer tab, i would love if we had a #development like live chat on the forum and eventually replace discord with it.
You guys should make a hub world where everyone can join and meet new people. Kinda like Playstation home from back in the day (fuck im old)
When you load into s&box you are loaded into the hubworld, and then you could hit the menu button to find games, and join party's.
S&box should be a social game.
To iterate on this idea, some featured games (maybe on a weekly rotation) with their own custom developer submitted gamefronts in the 3d space of the hub. I am sort of imagining a crash bandicoot 2 style level select hub scaled for the social side with the portals of the set of featured games to open the games page. The style of the portals frame or what surrounds it in a perimeter is what the game's org would voluntarily submit to a certain standard.
I think the server list should only show dedicated servers (or a switcher?), P2P games are usually short-lived, a different playstyle for different games, it seems we already have global chat and party finder, there should be more emphasis on dedicated servers which is a more gmod-orientated experience.
Some games maybe have lobbies and dedicated, dedicated servers are usually a better experience and encourage persistent players for "community".
> Most multiplayer games (CS, Dota, Valorant, Tarkov...) have automated matchmaking idk why we would force users to scroll through endless lists of parties by hand.
This is 100% true for most lobby games, where the user doesn’t care about which one. Specific games definitely want that, so the question is if we make that based on dedicated servers, where an additional manual selection is needed. But in most games- I would also not care where I join honestly.
