Garry from Garry's mod finally gets the ultra-rare achievement for playing with Garry

Updated 10/26/25: Garry Newman got back to PCG to clarify some confusion around this, mainly that it wasn't achieved in Garry's Mod. "It was actually in s&box," explains Newman, "not Garry's Mod, someone made a sandbox mod for it and added the achievement."

Original story follows: Garry's Mod is a physics sandbox created by Garry Newman and Facepunch Studios way back in 2004, and in the two decades since release it has spawned countless thousands of mods, memes and gamemodes. Back in 2019 PC Gamer spoke to Garry Newman about the first 15 years, and asked about the most-requested feature from players:

"The biggest thing, by about a million miles, is the 'Played with Garry' achievement," says Newman. "It’s one of the hardest achievements to get on Steam—for obvious reasons."

The achievement is called "Yes, I am the real Garry!" and requires players to "play on the same server as Garry" himself. If you look at Gmod's achievements 2.8% of players have managed to bag this, which still seems relatively high, but bear in mind that many frustrated players have resorted to spoofing encounters or other nefarious means: Because it's hard to play with Garry. 

And in theory, it should be impossible for Garry to play with Garry. Yet Garry Newman of Garry's mod has now achieved "Yes, I am the real Garry" and Steam popped the achievement.

"Finally got this," says Newman, posting a screenshot of the achievement.

The top reply from Yomi is, inevitably, "can you help me get it Garry?" Jaiydanimate is almost plaintive: "u should just give it to everyone at this point bro I been tryin my darndest since 2009."

"That genuinely made me mad," says Tlacitel on the gmod subreddit. "Wait there is more than one Garry?" asks Volt-Off, leading to the inevitable reply from Kgamer404: "Always has been."

There's plenty of speculation about how exactly this was awarded at this point, and I have absolutely no idea. I dropped Newman a line to ask if he was any the wiser, and will update with any response.

Newman and Facepunch continue to work on Rust, which is in incredibly rude health, and the game-slash-platform eventually intended as the successor to Garry's mod, s&box. The idea with the latter is not just improving everything, but giving creators a distribution method and way to monetise their creations that avoids traditional industry fees and inconveniences. s&box is currently available to developers in a preview version.