You might not think about Rust all that much at this point if you’re not playing it. “It’s that game with random gender and character creation, right?” might crop up if you remember what it is, or “an early survival sandbox with lots of player death” if you have slightly more detail in your memory. What you might not realize in those cases is that the game, initially released in Early Access back in 2013, has hit its all-time player concurrency record just yesterday.
What’s behind the surge in popularity? Well, it seems to have become a new haven for certain popular streamers, driving up its audience on Twitch and inspiring more players to buy the game and try it out. Having passed a million viewers on the popular streaming service, it seems clear that the surge in popularity is driving the game to greater heights than it had seen up to this point… which isn’t bad for a game passing seven years since initial release.
