Having flown under the radar of many gamers for years now, the game Rust has been picking up steam and become one of the more popular survival video games on the market. From the creators of Garry’s Mod (GMod), Facepunch Studio has expanded their GMod success with Rust as the centerpiece game.
What is Rust?
First released for public early access in 2013, Rust was a bare bone, simple version of a survival game. Players would on a spawn generic island map, collect resources to create a base, then fight other players to steal their resources. Ten years later, the improvements and additions to the game could not be vaster. However, it’s not the changes themselves that have made Rust rise in popularity, it’s that most of the improvements and additions were requested and inspired by Rust’s community. There are very few game developers that listen to their community like Facepunch does.
Moving into the gameplay, there is truly an overwhelming (in a good way) number of things to do in Rust. That being said, the gameplay still stays true to its origins of collecting resources, building bases, and duking it out with other players to steal their resources; but now, there are so many different ways to do this. Whether it is creating a farm to collect the resources you need, or manually using an axe/pickaxe on trees and stone, or creating an electric grid within your based to do all of that automatically, or even get a helicopter to hunt down other players from the sky, every player has their own way of building up their resources to be successful.
No matter how a player wants to try and conquer other players and the island, they can do it in that way. In Rust, what took literal days to do in 2013 now takes hours to do in 2023, however the steps to get there have become much more complex, which makes the game that much more intriguing. Although, probably the most promising part about Rust is that it continues to get more updates and additions to the game every single month.
Why is Rust getting into the spotlight now?
For the third year in a row, Rust hosted a Twitch Rivals tournament from May 15th to May 20th featuring 160 streamers including some of the biggest streams on the platform like xQc (the most watched streamer on twitch.tv) and Summit1g (one of the most veteran streamers in the world). The 160 players, some of whom had never played Rust and less who have thousands of hours in the game, were split into 8 teams and given five days to collect resources, fight each other, and build the most elaborate bases possible.
From an outside perspective, it may not seem like the most exciting thing to watch, but it turned out to be one of the most popular Twitch Rivals tournaments ever, even out of the hundreds of games that have been featured on Twitch Rivals. Over 1 million players tuned in across all of the 160 streamers’ channels, it was an absolute hit which pushed Rust to be the number four game being played on steam. This feat is a huge success for Facepunch Studio considering the number one and two games are Counterstrike: Global Offensive and DOTA 2, both of which are developed by Steam’s in-house game studio Valve, and the third being EA’s flagship game Apex Legends.
One of the bigger reasons this Rust tournament was so successful is that twitch and Facepunch teamed up to provide in-game skins for different items in Rust. There were over a dozen different skins to collect, and the only way people could get them all is if they watched players from each of the eight teams for a least a few hours. Therefore, watching the tournament through the five days it was live granted regular players in-game benefits, something that will likely be followed by many other game developers in the future.
After a 10-year development journey, Rust has been brought into the spotlight and it will only continue to get improved upon. Rust is definitely a fun and super in depth game that could provide hundreds of hours of engaging gameplay, as well as a game that will continue to be relevant in the gaming marketplace due to its constant updates.
