Rust has sold more than 16 million copies since releasing 10 years ago

Plus, backpacks are inbound.

Rust: a survivor on a field wearing a bright blue backpack.

Much like Soulsborne titles, PvP/PvE survival games like Rust and DayZ are known for being quite punishing. However, it’s this brutality that’s evidently one of the reasons they’re so popular. Speaking of Rust, it recently turned 10 and the developer has shared some interesting stats about the game.

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In a recent post on Steam, Facepunch Studios celebrated Rust passing its first-decade milestone. That’s if you include the early access release – which the developer obviously does – as that came out in December 2013. The full version didn’t officially drop until 2018.

As for what’s occurred in that time, well the studio says that Rust has sold more than 16,000,000 copies in total. That’s an astonishing achievement for an indie outfit and is just under half what Zelda: Breath of the Wild sold. On top of that, the game has raised more than $1.7 million for charity, had over 244,000 players at its peak, and has had more than 370 patches.

And the updates keep on coming

The game recently had its first update of 2024, and starting in February, players can look forward to more inventory space. Rust will be getting a backpack implemented, which will be craftable and allow you to carry more items.

The post on Steam also says the developer has a “ton of content currently in development.” Some of these include improvements to the world and environment, bringing down memory usage for better performance, a possible revisit of nighttime lighting, plus plenty more.

Here’s a quick look at what’s coming to Rust, hopefully this year:

  • Older monument reworks and improvements
  • Continue experimenting and making meta changes to gunplay
  • Softcore game mode Improvements
  • Hardcore game mode experimenting
  • Experimenting with progression
  • Improvements to AI
  • Improvements to events such as the patrol helicopter, Launch site APC and Cargoship
  • World environment
  • Underwater exploration
  • Missions
  • Using our data analytics to identify less commonly used items and balancing
  • Experimenting with new ways/events to encourage players to engage with PvP
About The Author
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Andrew Heaton
Andrew has been a gamer since the 17th century Restoration period. He now writes for a number of online publications, contributing news and other articles. He does not own a powdered wig.
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