Rust Finally Coming Out of Early Access Next Month

We were beginning to think that the day would never come when the survival game on Steam, Rust, came out of Early Access and into the world as a finished game. That day is here, albeit a little late, but better late than never!

As far as being "finished," per se, that might be jumping the gun a little. Though the game itself is coming out of Early Access, Facepunch Studios does mention that it's not quite as complete as many were hoping, "Don't think of this as us claiming that the game is done. Think of this as us saying that if Early Access didn't exist we'd have released the game on Steam by now." So how does that make this game out of Early Access worthy?

Part of leaving Early Access is making the development more stable," Facepunch clarified. "That means that not rushing in features and fixes that end up breaking something else. For that reason we're going to be transitioning to monthly updates."

According to the official Facepunch blog post:

After over four long years, Rust is leaving Early Access. We started creating Rust in 2013, releasing it for testing originally as a browser game. After a few months, in December 2013 we released on Steam in Early Access.

We plan to leave Early Access on the 8th February 2018. We're not planning any big reveals, launch parties, around the world tours or cash prize giveaways for this event. We're not going to move staff onto other projects. It's very much going to happen without much fuss. It's business as usual.

Part of leaving Early Access is making the development more stable. That means that not rushing in features and fixes that end up breaking something else. For that reason we're going to be transitioning to monthly updates.

Obviously these updates aren't going to work unless people are playing them, so we're going to do what a lot of other games do and have another version of Rust that will sit alongside the "stable" version.

• Main Branch - monthly tested updates with smaller irregular hotfixes between them
• Staging Branch - bleeding edge, daily updates

You can have both versions installed at the same time, so our hope is that we'll get one or two servers on the staging version that are populated all the time and help test the updates that are coming to Main at the end of the month.

With the game officially "leaving" Early Access, the price is also set to increase. This isn't abnormal for games moving into more finalised states, but the retail price has been shifted from $19.99 to $34.99. At least it won't be set at the full 60!

About the game:

The only aim in Rust is to survive.

To do this you will need to overcome struggles such as hunger, thirst and cold. Build a fire. Build a shelter. Kill animals for meat. Protect yourself from other players, and kill them for meat. Create alliances with other players and form a town.

Do whatever it takes to survive.