


A price increase upon exiting Early Access had been in the plans, and now the time has come. In addition to the change in development schedule, the price of Rust will be increasing from $19.99 to $34.99. The Staging Branch will feature "bleeding edge" daily updates, likely as a venue for experimenting with new features. The Main Branch will consist of the aforementioned monthly updates with the occasional hotfix.


The game will further be split into two branches: the Main Branch and the Staging Branch. The developers will be transitioning from a weekly update schedule to a monthly update schedule. However, the schedule for development updates will be changing. On one hand, they’ve found that even after all these years, there’s no other game quite like Rust, but on the other, its sharp edges have cut into beginners’ desire to keep playing.This doesn't mean that development of the game will end. New Rust players on Steam, then, are split. Progress is hard won, especially given that players can stroll in and wreak havoc on carefully constructed bases while others are logged off. Anything is possible, but it’s often sandwiched between mounds of death and toxicity. Some aid newcomers, but others ruthlessly bully them. Where streamers all role-play and only open fire in an agreed-upon set of locations and scenarios, regular Rust servers are a hodgepodge. Rust’s dark - though not exactly little-known - secret is that Twitch streams are not indicative of what the game is actually like. While some enjoy the game’s inhospitable chaos, others are finding that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew. This means new players are discovering the genre oldtimer for the first time. If you even casually follow the Grimace-coloured streaming monolith that is Twitch, you’re well aware that the current flavour of the month is Rust, a survival game that originally came out in 2013.
