RUST dev after three years of early access: ‘If you’re bored of the game then just stop playing it’

While RUST has amused us plenty this year, thanks to the character gender via Steam ID thing and the hobo simulator (and don’t forget penis size last year!), hardcore players are getting bored, and can you blame them? The survival sandbox has been lingering in early access since December 11th, 2013 — that’s three years for those of you who don’t do math over Christmas break.

If you’ve among the many gamers fed up with early access periods that seem to drag on, you probably don’t want to be told “too bad” when you voice those complaints, but that’s pretty much what happened in the RUST community last week, when Facepunch Studios’ Garry Newman basically recommended that complainy Redditors just stop playing.

“We’re stuck in ping pong loop,” he wrote. “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.”

“My worry is that this is going to be a constant thing. We’re not going to hit a point where you go – yep – don’t change anything – keep it like it is. Because it’s not that one particular system is much better than the other, it’s just that one is fresher than the other. So I’m going to make a suggestion.. If you’re bored of the game then just stop playing it. But before you get angry about it consider whether we have given you enough entertainment over the last 3 years to justify pocketing your $20. I know this probably sounds pretty dismissive, but that’s not how I want it to be. I’m trying to be pragmatic. 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. 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.” [Emphasis ours.]

You can just imaging how the level-headed folks on Reddit took that.

Facepunch did just release a small patch, for what it’s worth — mostly bug fixes and the addition of holiday content.