How many people play Rust? — 2023 statistics

Rust crossed 12 million units sold in 2021.

(Sources: GameDeveloper, GameSpot)

• By the end of 2021, the game sold 12,481,079 units.
• DLC packs sold 1,111,846 units.
• Rust sold 1 million copies before it even came out.
• Rust beat Garry’s mod in revenue in a fraction of the time it took the latter to reach $30 million in sales.

Facepunch Studios made over $2 million in a single week from Rust in 2021.

(Source: GameSpot)

• The $2 million mark was achieved when the game raked in over $1 million per day twice in one week.
• The money was generated following a large influx of players and streamers that started playing the game.
• Around the same time, Rust managed to double its record player count.

A game’s popularity can be directly influenced by the number of popular streamers playing it as their entertaining content can inspire people to pick it up, and that is exactly what happened with Rust. The game was in early access for years, but as its full release passed, people flocked to it like birds.

Rust has generated $276.4 million in revenue on Steam.

(Source: VG Insights)

• The game averages about 90,000 active players at any given time.
• 87% of its reviews are positive.
• It has sold 13.9 million units on Steam.
• The average play time per user is 854.2 hours.
• The median play time is 374 hours.

Steam is the most popular platform for playing Rust because of its ease of access, and we can see the popularity of the game reflected in the game’s sales and revenue. Aside from that, we can also see that the average play time for the game is very high, meaning that a vast majority of Rust players tend to play the game for hundreds of hours.

The developer of Rust did not care that they lost $4 million to refunds.

(Source: Mashable, GamesIndustry)

• $4 million was only 6% of the total revenue that Rust generated for the studio during its soft release period.
• Many players complained about the game being boring due to its gameplay dynamic.
• Garry Newman justified this by saying that the game is innately difficult and that adjustment is required to understand it and play it properly.
• In the end, the success of Rust made it so the refunds did not matter in the slightest.
• He also invited players who were unhappy with the game to give it up as the unhelpful feedback was useless.

This was a notable moment of financial badassery as Garry Newman fired back at complaining players telling them to essentially “git gud” and that the game is as it should be, but he still welcomed positive feedback that could improve the game in many respects. In the end, those refunds did not matter as Rust improved all the same.

26.72% of Rust players are from the United States.

(Source: PlayerCounter)

• 10.18% of players are from Russia.
• 4.04% of players are from Turkey.
• 3% of players are from Ukraine.
• 2.64% of players are from the United Kingdom.

These are just some percentages so you can have a decent perspective of the distribution of Rust’s players around the globe!

Rust had 368.2 million hours watched on Twitch in 2021.

(Source: SullyGnome)

• The game had 4.7 million broadcasting hours.
• It had 42,041 viewers on average.
• 544 channels were streaming the game on average.
• It had a viewer ratio of 77.2.
• Its max viewer count was 1.3 million.
• 234,341 broadcasters streamed the game.

Sometimes survival games get a bad rep for just being glorified farming games or inventory managers, but in the case of Rust, there are factions of players that actively attack others, trying to raid bases and such, so each moment in Rust can be deadly, if you’re not careful. This is why the game is so popular on Twitch, and why it has gathered so many hours watched.

To sum up

And there you have it, some of the most relevant Rust statistics out there! As you can see, Rust has grown to be one of the most successful and influential survival games out there, as evidenced by its player count, revenue, and total units sold to date. Even though it was in early access for a very long time when it finally came time for the game to be fully released in 2018, an avalanche of players populated its servers, leading to a healthy population that is sure to stay around for years to come. We sincerely hope that you have enjoyed the content we’ve presented here and that all of your questions have been answered!