Creator of Rust has the best response to long time players complaining about the game


Garry Newman, the head over at Facepunch Studios who are responsible for Rust, has some advice for players who are bored with his game and keep “bitching” about it, and that advice is to stop playing it.

While in early access, players are invited to give their feedback and thoughts about the progress and direction of the game, but Garry is growing tired of being trapped in a loop. What keeps happening is that they’ll release an update, people will enjoy it at first but then start to sour on it, so they’ll release a new one, and the pattern keeps repeating. If you check on Steam, there is no shortage of negative reviews from people who have played the game for OVER A THOUSAND HOURS. So there’s kind of a weird phenomenon going on here. Three years of gameplay, hundreds and thousands of hours, for twenty bucks, and people are furious.

image: rust
image: rust

The game is only $20, and has been on sale for less than that, and people have gotten hundreds of hours of enjoying out of it, and the dev is just tired of hearing hate and complains from them all the time. There’s a difference between legitimate feedback to help improve the game, and just whining for the sake of it. Here’s Garry in his own words…

“I’m noticing a pattern, and we need to address it. It’s something we need to get past as a community, not only because it’s getting boring but because it has wider implications,” he wrote. “We’re stuck in ping pong loop. We release an update, you love it for a month, you get bored, blame the system, bitch for a few months, then we release another update—and the same thing happens.”

He goes on to reveal the necessary roadmap to getting this game out of early access and into a full release: 

“If you’re interested in the game, if you play regularly and still get enjoyment when you play—we’re definitely interested to hear what you think. We especially love hearing your stories, watching your videos, seeing your screenshots and paintings—all things that this subreddit has been very low on,” Newman wrote. “If we want to leave Early Access then breaking this loop has to be part of that plan. We have a pretty good idea on how to push forward with Rust, but none of it is going to make the game more appealing to people that have spent their last 1,000 hours hating it.”

image: rust
image: rust

So, why is the community in Rust particularly… intense? Well, it’s a super stressful game. Anyone can kill you at any moment and take everything you’ve worked for. At best, you have a verbal agreement with someone, and all you can do is hope that they don’t betray you. Rust is turned into more than a survival game, it’s a social experiment in humanity. It’s an exercise in trust, stress, loss, and disappointment… all the time.