Rust leaves Early Access this February

After four years of development, Rust leaves Early Access.

For those who have been living under a literal Rust rock, the massively multiplayer survival game finally launches on Windows PC February 8th, 2018. It has been in Early Access since its Steam debut in December of 2013. With a recent developer blog post announcing the leave, Facepunch Studios gave details as to how updates will work in the future and how they are made.

“Part of leaving Early Access is making the development more stable. That means that not rushing in features and fixes that end up breaking something else. For that reason we’re going to be transitioning to monthly updates. Obviously these updates aren’t going to work unless people are playing them, so we’re going to do what a lot of other games do and have another version of Rust that will sit alongside the “stable” version.”

This means that two versions of Rust will be out in February. One of which will be the normal retail version of the game which will receive regular monthly updates. The second being the developer version or “staging branch”, which will feature daily updates to game. Facepunch did state however whilst Rust is coming out of Early Access, it doesn’t mean it’s a complete game.

“Don’t think of this as us claiming that the game is done. Think of this as us saying that if Early Access didn’t exist we’d have released the game on Steam by now.”

With the full launch as well Rust will also be getting a price increase from its current £14.99 / €19.99 / $19.99 up to $34.99 (no word on other prices yet), so if you’re interested, you can pick up Rust on Steam now.