Rust Review: The Cruellest Survival Game on Steam Teaches You to Trust No One

Rust is a multiplayer survival game from British studio Facepunch Studios. You spawn naked with a rock and a torch and have to survive against the other players on the server. The full version came out on Steam on February 8, 2018, and the game has been getting monthly updates ever since. In this review we tell you what Rust does well, where it stumbles and whether it’s for you.

What Rust is about

You appear on a server naked, with a rock and a torch. You use the rock to gather wood and stone, craft a stone hatchet and pickaxe and start building. A sleeping bag gives you your own respawn point, and a small base with a lock on the door is your first shelter. But anything you build, someone else can break into and loot.

The heart of your base is the Tool Cupboard, which costs 1,000 wood. It stops decay and keeps other players from building around your house. You have to keep it stocked with resources, though. Once they run out, a wooden base decays in 3 hours, stone in 5 and metal in 8. You unlock recipes with scrap in the tech tree, and since November 2025 research has been much cheaper. How to survive your first day is in our beginner’s guide.

The wipe: back to zero every month

Rust doesn’t have an ending, it has the wipe. Official servers reset on the first Thursday of the month at 19:00 London time, which is also when the monthly update lands. The map and buildings disappear, while learned blueprints survive a regular wipe. Community servers also run weekly or biweekly cycles. The schedule is explained in our wipe schedule guide.

What critics praise and what bothers players

The PC version has 69 on Metacritic from 12 reviews. Most of them were written in 2018 when the full version launched, and the game has changed a lot since. PC Gamer gave it 80 and describes Rust as a malicious experience rife with betrayal, cruelty and greed, one that can be frustrating and sublime in equal doses. IGN gave it 70 and recommends it to competitive players who want survival with crafting, but not to everyone else. Game Informer, at 65, criticised the game’s habit of tripping over its own feet. Facepunch’s website quotes PC Gamer calling Rust one of the cruellest games on Steam, which is exactly what makes it so compelling.

Players rate it better than critics. On Steam it has 86.7% positive out of 1,408,438 reviews, which is Very Positive.

Servers, cheaters and Tutorial Island

You only play on servers: Rust has no offline single-player mode. If you want to play solo, you can run your own server, as Rust Dedicated Server is free. Official Facepunch servers run vanilla settings and attract mostly experienced players, so a newcomer has a hard time there for the first few days. Rust uses Easy Anti-Cheat, and Facepunch also fights cheaters with servers: premium servers only let you in with a Rust inventory on Steam worth at least $15, and since March 2026 secure servers require TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot. According to Facepunch, you run into a cheater roughly once per 63 players there, compared with once per 42 on regular servers. How to choose a server is in our servers guide.

New players get help from Tutorial Island, added in March 2024. It teaches you movement, crafting, building, combat and cooking and takes up to an hour. It only runs on servers that switch it on, though.

Price and platforms

Rust costs €39.99 / $39.99 on Steam, and the PC version is sold only there. It runs on Windows and macOS; Linux and Steam Deck aren’t supported. Steam Family Sharing is disabled for Rust. On PS5 and Xbox Series X|S there’s a separate Rust Console Edition from Double Eleven, a separate game with its own servers. Prices and editions are in our price and platforms guide.

On PC, plan for 12 GB of RAM and a GTX 1060 as the minimum, and Facepunch recommends an SSD. The details are in our system requirements.

Who Rust is for (and who it isn’t)

It’s for you if you enjoy competing with other players, building a base and planning raids. You’ll get the most out of it with a group you can take turns on watch with and share resources. For €39.99 you get a game that resets every month and keeps getting new content.

Skip it if you want to play alone offline or can’t stand someone looting the base you spent all day building in a single night. Rust won’t run on Steam Deck.

Verdict: Is Rust worth it?

Yes, if you’re after a harsh multiplayer survival game and have a group to play it with. We’re giving it 8/10.

Eight years after launch, Rust is still a living game with monthly updates, and players rate it much higher than the critics did in 2018. Building, raids and the monthly wipe work. Points come off for the tough start for newcomers, the fight against cheaters and the fact that you can’t play without a server.

Playing Rust? All our guides are on the Rust hub. Start with the beginner’s guide, and our wipe schedule guide explains when servers reset. You can find teammates on the GamersTogether Discord.

FAQ

This review is based on player ratings on Steam and critic scores on Metacritic, on reviews from PC Gamer, IGN and Game Informer, and on official information from Facepunch Studios and Double Eleven. Information verified on October 21, 2026. All our guides to the game are on the Rust hub.