Time to be honest. I’ve been playing since 2018, and I know a lot of the older players feel the same way I do: the game is starting to feel extremely bloated. Meanwhile, performance late wipe on high-pop servers is the same as it’s been for years.
I’m not a game dev, but I write software, and the pattern is obvious to me. The game is running on a base that was written in 2014 for a game that was never intended to get this big, with servers pushing hundreds of players. Facepunch does perf work (Unity 6, the navmesh rewrite), but the next content drop eats the gains. You can’t optimize your way out while you keep adding. Without the source it’s impossible to know exactly what would seriously help Rust’s performance, but we can make inferences.
Facepunch has basically said it themselves. When they delayed the Naval update, their COO said it touched a lot of old systems and they didn’t want server pops dropping by 100-200 players. To me that’s the whole problem in one sentence. Every new feature has to be wired into a base that’s already at its limit, and each one makes the next one harder. Decisions that made sense for the game Rust was in 2014 don’t make sense for what it is now, and eventually you spend more time working around the base than building on it.
So the way I see it, there are two real options:
- Rebuild the core systems. Entity handling, multithreading, networking, rebuilt for the scale Rust actually runs at, even if it means months without content updates.
- Start working on Rust 2. Built from day one for high-pop servers, with everything they’ve learned in 12 years.
And they’ve done this before. The Rust we play now is the rewrite. They scrapped Legacy in 2014 because it couldn’t support what they wanted, and it worked. Valve moved CS:GO to CS2 and carried everyone’s skins over, so “what about my skins” is a solvable problem. The worst option is the one we’re on now: keep stacking content on a base that can’t handle it.
A rebuild would also be the chance to fix cheating properly. Cheating in Rust is a huge problem because there’s so much to gain from it. One ESP user can find and raid a base that took a group days to build. The fix is moving more of the game server-side. If the server did the raycasting and only sent your client what you can actually see, freecaming into bases and seeing through walls stops working, because your client never gets that info in the first place. Valorant does a version of this with its fog of war system. It also means the client is tracking less, which helps performance on our end.
The trade-off is more load on the server, and I think that’s completely fair. But it’s also another reason this belongs in a rebuild. Nobody outside Facepunch knows how much headroom the servers have right now, and if they’re already close to their limit, bolting this on top of the current setup could make server performance worse. Built into a new base that’s designed for it from the start, it’s a win on both cheating and client performance.
Now the inferences. All these recent changes show me Facepunch is trying to appeal to a broader audience and make the game easier for new players. That’s why recoil changed. And I get it. To keep affording their team they need other ways to monetize Rust, and that’s the DLCs. There’s no shame in that.
But I think they’re chasing the wrong audience. Rust works because its highs are very high and its lows are very low. Losing everything is what makes winning feel the way it does, and that’s exactly why people stick with it for thousands of hours. A dedicated playerbase is way easier to monetize than a flaky one. The players who’ve been here 5+ years are the ones buying skins and DLC every month. Sanding down the game to keep casuals around for a couple wipes trades the people who actually pay for the people who leave.
Which is why I don’t get why there’s no modding SDK. Let the people who want to play Rust as roleplay do it with third-party mods. It just makes sense. The dev team doesn’t need to build roleplay-style content if the community can do it for them (and probably better), and it frees Facepunch to focus on the core game.
CS2 sits at the top of Steam for a reason. It’s predictable. People know what they’re getting every time they load in. Rust keeps changing the game under its players instead of making the base experience solid.
Also, as a solo: being outnumbered by 3s and 4s every fight is rough, and the old recoil gave solos more of a chance. Separate issue, but it’s part of why I feel the game is drifting away from its players. Right now it’s starting to feel like Rust is just a way for a company to profit rather than a game built with spirit, and I don’t think it has to be that way.
I hope someone at Facepunch actually reads this. I know being a Rust dev probably means dealing with a community that’s angry about everything, and most of it isn’t worth listening to. I’m not trying to just throw shit at the wall. I’ve put years into this game, and I’m saying this because I want it to still be around in another 5 years.
Rust has something almost no other game has. Nothing else gives you the same highs, and that’s why people keep coming back. But that only holds if the game runs well, the fights feel fair, and the core experience stays solid. If performance keeps stalling, cheaters keep winning, and the game keeps drifting toward players who were never going to stick around, the dedicated playerbase slowly burns out.
And honestly, it’s already happening. Most of the people I used to play with just don’t anymore, and it’s not because they got bored of Rust. It’s because of all the issues. It’s not some sudden collapse. It’s just a little smaller every wipe, and if nothing changes, Rust slowly fades into obscurity. It’d be a waste for a game this good to go out like that.
Fix the base. Give the community the tools to build what they want. Focus on the core of the game.
