Rust leaving early access February 8th, then development will continue
Nudist murder island simulator
After four years of nude murders, multiplayer survival sandbox Rust will be declared done enough to leave early access on February 8th. Development will still continue, mind, with future plans including improving farming, adding vehicles from cars to hot air balloons, radios, surrendering, and oh so much more. However, the game has settled into form enough over its time in early access that Facepunch Studios are now happy removing that label and bumping the price.
Rust's public development roadmap lays out the two main things they want to improve before launching: improving NPC AI (both animals and those strange non-nude humans), and helping ease new players in with hint pop-ups and a light tutorial. They also lay out their plans for the near and distant futures beyond that.
It's not a surprise that Rust will leave early access with a list of features still to come, as Facepunch have talked about this plan for a while. Studio head honcho Garry Newman talked in yesterday's announcement about why they think Rust is done enough.
"Please try not to compare the game to some other finished game or some idealised version you have in your head. Compare the game now to how it was when we entered Early Access. That's the delta that we feel qualifies us to leave Early Access.
"Think of it more like we're leaving Prototyping and entering Alpha. Obviously we don't consider that we're actually entering Alpha, this is an example. We're entering a more stable version of what we have been doing.
"We feel like if Early Access didn't exist and we had been making the game in secret, we'd be happy to put it on Steam now."
When Rust launches on Steam on February 8th, the price will go up from £15/$20 to $35.
But what's actually like these days? We sent in intrepid amateur nudist Alec Meer (amateur in that so far he's only nude in the shower) last June, and he returned with bloodstained hands muttering "Rust, old man – you've still got it." Or if you want to get philosophical and ask what the murder island is about, Dan Grill has ponderings for you.
Disclosure: former RPS hired gun Craig Pearson works for Facepunch now.