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Rust

The only aim in Rust is to survive. Everything wants you to die - the island’s wildlife, other inhabitants, the environment, and other survivors. Do whatever it takes to last another night.

Verdict

Verdict coming soon: the jury is still reading

Buy, Wait, and Skip land in the next pass. Nothing on this card can be bought.

Player sentiment

Player sentiment is from Steam (PC) reviews.

All time

86.7%

1,402,823 reviews

12 months

83.7%

147,775 reviews

90 days

80.6%

29,427 reviews

30 days

80.9%

8,353 reviews

Stable+0.6 pts versus the previous 90 days

Review history

050100

Bars are review volume. The line is the positive percentage. Periods under 10 reviews are faded.

What players are saying

Positive

  • Welcome, to Rust. And that was the beginning of my journey in a game where you spawn naked on a beach, with absolutely nothing but a rock, a torch, and questionable life decisions. This is the drug I was never warned about.
    337h 48m played at review · 3 Sept 2026
  • Its like an abusive relationship for a masochist its really bad and toxic but you still love it.
    1955h 57m played at review · 10 Sept 2026
  • The fragment system has to go. It has become extremely hard for solos or smaller groups to acquire all of the fragments for tier 2 workbench even. It doesnt do anything for clans at all. The only place solos or small groups can safely and easily get t2 was outpost by buying fragments now even that is out of the picture with the outpost having to be charged via powerplant first. I really dont get it how this type of system is supposed to slow down clans ? Every wipe day its just people using grub gear and revys while there being a few groups with t2 holding all the tier 2 monuments. Its really stupid and its ruined the game imo. Not everyone wants to live on coast and dive for 3 hrs to get a tier 2 and then be on the edge of the map without any pvp going on. What angers me the most is these sort of updates get released for clans to be slowed down ??? Do developers even play the game especially on the highest pop vanilla servers ? Any opinions about this...
    3505h 46m played at review · 4 Sept 2026
  • this game is so fun it makes ur life so happy and makes you want to play everyday everyone is so nice
    1123h 8m played at review · 5 Sept 2026

Negative

  • I gained 150lbs and diabetes from play this ♥♥♥♥ ass game I want to shoot myself
    6623h 32m played at review · 21 Sept 2026
  • Steam Review — Why I Don't Recommend Rust The game itself is good. The problem is what Rust can do to your time. Rust is undeniably a well-designed survival game. The building, PvP, raiding, progression, exploration, teamwork, and unpredictable player interactions can create some incredible gaming moments. However, after looking at the experiences repeatedly described by both positive and negative Steam reviewers, I think there is a much bigger issue worth warning new players about: Rust can consume an enormous amount of your time while constantly making you feel like you need to keep playing. The biggest problem is the repetitive gameplay loop. You gather resources, build a base, farm more resources, research, craft weapons, collect better loot, defend your base, raid someone else, get raided, lose your progress, rebuild, and repeat the entire process after the next wipe. At first this feels exciting because everything is new. Eventually, however, you can realize that you're repeatedly performing the same tasks just to get back to where you already were. Rust has no real finish line. There is always another wipe, another base to build, another resource run, another raid, another weapon to obtain, another enemy to fight, or another reason to log back in. That can make the game extremely difficult to put down. Instead of playing because you genuinely want to, you can eventually find yourself playing because you feel like you need to keep up. The wipe system makes this even more frustrating. You can spend countless hours building a base and accumulating resources, only for a raid or server wipe to erase much of that progress. Then you're expected to start over. For some players, that constant reset is the appeal. For others, it eventually becomes exhausting because hundreds of hours can amount to repeatedly rebuilding something that is never permanent. The time commitment is the biggest hidden cost. The $40 purchase price isn't necessarily the expensive part. Your time is. If Rust becomes a game you play 20–30 hours a week, that's roughly 1,000–1,500 hours per year. Those are hours that could have gone toward school, work, career development, exercise, family, friends, traveling, learning something new, or simply getting proper sleep. Gaming is supposed to be entertainment. It becomes a problem when the entertainment starts competing with the rest of your life. Rust can also create FOMO and an obligation to log in. You may think, "I'll just take a few days off," but then you start worrying about falling behind, missing progression, getting raided, losing your base, or letting your teammates down. Eventually the thought becomes, "I have to check the base," or "I need to farm tonight." That's when a game can start feeling less like recreation and more like another responsibility. The community can make the experience considerably worse. Not every Rust player is toxic, and there are plenty of good people you'll meet. However, the game naturally encourages distrust, competition, raiding, betrayal, trash talking, door camping, griefing and revenge. Someone can spend hours specifically making your experience miserable simply because the game allows it. Losing a legitimate fight is one thing; having somebody repeatedly grief you after you've already lost everything is another. Cheating is another major concern. Rust has a long-standing problem with cheaters, and Facepunch has publicly reported hundreds of thousands of bans and millions of cheat reports. Even with anti-cheat measures and bans, encountering a suspected cheater can be especially frustrating in Rust because you're not simply losing one match—you can potentially lose hours or days of accumulated progress. The high-stakes PvP system can also make ordinary gaming sessions unnecessarily stressful. When you hear footsteps, see another player, hear gunshots, or notice someone building nearby, you're constantly evaluating whether you're about to lose everything. That tension is part of what makes Rust exciting, but after enough time it can become exhausting. You can spend a large portion of your gaming session worrying about protecting progress rather than actually enjoying yourself. Then there is the financial side. The game isn't necessarily limited to the initial purchase. Rust has DLC, cosmetics, skins, marketplace items and other ways to spend additional money. One skin might not seem like much, but $5 here, $10 there, another weapon skin, another building skin, another cosmetic, and eventually the total can become surprisingly large. Be especially careful if you're someone who enjoys collecting things or feels compelled to have the newest or rarest items. Virtual items can become a very real expense. The sunk-cost mentality is another trap. You might eventually think, "I've already played 500 hours, so I can't quit now." Then 1,000 hours becomes 2,000. But the hours you've already spent don't require you to spend even more. If Rust is no longer improving your life or providing enough enjoyment to justify the time you're putting into it, you're allowed to walk away. Ironically, some of the game's strongest positive qualities are also its biggest problems. The persistent world, wipes, raiding, progression, competition, social interaction, resource gathering and unpredictability are what make Rust unique. They're also what can make it incredibly time-consuming and difficult to stop playing. My biggest warning to new players is simple: don't judge Rust only by whether it's fun. Ask whether the amount of time it demands from you is worth it. A game can be fun and still consume too much of your life. A game can be well-made and still become unhealthy for you. A game can have an amazing community experience while also exposing you to cheating, griefing and toxicity. And a $40 game can eventually cost far more than $40 when you include DLC, skins, marketplace spending and, most importantly, hundreds or thousands of hours of your life. If you can play Rust casually, set boundaries, avoid unnecessary spending and walk away whenever you want, that's one thing. But if you notice yourself sacrificing sleep, work, school, relationships, finances or real-world goals just to keep up with a virtual wipe cycle, it's probably time to reconsider. Rust isn't necessarily a bad game. That's exactly why the warning matters. It's good enough to keep you coming back. Don't let a game designed around endless progression convince you that you have an obligation to keep progressing. Your real life doesn't have a wipe button.
    490h 34m played at review · 24 Sept 2026
  • This game would be super fun. I say would be because it has 2 fatal flaws right now that make it unplayable. 1. the game is absolutely positively overrun with cheaters. Facepunch advertises that they ban 650ish cheaters per day. That is absolutely insane in a game that has a peak player count of 80k a day. That means they are banning almost 1% of the player base that is online on any given day. And that's the one facepunch catches and bans. That doesn't cover ones banned by servers for cheating. That doesn't cover the ubiquitous ESP and aimbotting that they seemingly don't even try to police. And that brings us to the other fatal flaw. The game is old and tired and they are making absolutely no effort to bring in new players. So if you buy this you get to play against people who have been playing it hardcore almost a decade usually. In most games they look at 1k hours as being an experienced player. Get ready to enter a game where 5k hrs is the new expectation. All in all, don't bother unless you want to get dunked on for your first several hundred hours by the absolute army of no lifers this game attracts. And if you make it through that you get to continue to get dunked on by the highschooler who got mad and enabled ESP and aimbot earlier today. Seriously, just check the reddit and you'll see you should give this game a pass. Do better facepunch.
    524h 3m played at review · 26 Sept 2026
  • Rust killed my family. I was distressed and my 14 year old son commited suicide after I spent 40 hours straight protecting my clan base. As a part of a chinese zerg, I was very shocked to see my son, my wife, my wife's boyfriend, and my brother's sister's ex boyfriend dead on the sofa. They had all committeddded sepekku.
    135h 31m played at review · 5 Sept 2026

Available on

Availability only. Player sentiment is from Steam (PC) reviews.

Genres

Price
£34.99
Release
2018-02-08
Developer
Facepunch Studios
Publisher
Facepunch Studios

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Creator coverage

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Where to buy

Steam, plus partner stores where a link has been added. Partner stores are labelled Affiliate.

Method

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History window
2013-12-01 to 2026-10-01
  • Under 60 minutes played at review: 0
  • Under 20 characters of text: 0
  • Received for free: 0

Sources: Steam.

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