Rust
GameBy Facepunch Studios
20 documents in the library are about Rust, from writers such as Stream Hatchet, GameDiscoverCo and Extra Credits. Each has a summary and key insights with the page they come from.
- Articles
- 15
Connections
The documents about Rust on the inner ring, the other games and companies they name on the outer one. Select a cover to see it up close and open it in a new tab; drag to move, pinch or Ctrl + scroll to zoom.
Key figures from the reports
The survival genre remains a top performer on streaming platforms, with established titles like Rust (202M monthly hours), Minecraft (141M), and Escape from Tarkov (121M) demonstrating high durability.
Stream Hatchet, 2025 · Survival Games on Live Streaming with Dune: Awakening
Rust generated over $1 million in daily Steam revenue on two separate occasions in early 2021, despite having originally launched in 2013.
GameDiscoverCo, 2021 · How Did Rust Make $1 Million in Steam Revenue in a Day - Twice?
Emiru maintained the #1 spot among female streamers in May 2024 with an average minute viewership (AMA) of 16K, supported by a strategic partnership with the Rust Twitch Drops campaign.
Stream Hatchet, 2024 · Top 10 Female Streamers for May 2024
Facepunch Studios' May 2024 Twitch Drops campaign for Rust generated 17.8 million hours watched over a one-week period.
Stream Hatchet, 2024 · Rust Beats Out GTA V with May Twitch Drops Campaign
Rust surged into the top 10 games with 36 million hours watched, a 246% increase from March driven by a major game update and server wipe.
Stream Hatchet, 2024 · Top Games in Live Streaming: April 2024
On Steam
Steam estimates as of 9 Oct 2026. Revenue is premium revenue on Steam only: game sales, without DLC.
- Revenue to date
- $370.0M
- Units sold
- 17.3M
- Last 12 months
- $24.9M
- 990K units
- Price
- $39.99
- Positive reviews
- 87%
- of 1.4M reviews
- Peak players
- 259K
- at the same time
- Followers
- 1.3M
- Average playtime
- 459 h
| Year | Share of the best year | Revenue | Units |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | $35.8M | 1.5M | |
| 2020 | $30.2M | 1.0M | |
| 2021 | $39.7M | 1.5M | |
| 2022 | $29.2M | 1.0M | |
| 2023 | $28.4M | 980K | |
| 2024 | $28.8M | 1.1M | |
| 2025 | $28.9M | 1.0M | |
| 2026 so far | $17.6M | 703K |
On Steam since Dec 5, 2013 · Developer Facepunch StudiosSteam store page
Documents about Rust
The Popularity of Roleplay Content & Its Impact on GTA
Roleplay (RP) content serves as a primary driver of viewership for the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) franchise on live-streaming platforms.
- Roleplay (RP) content is the dominant format for Grand Theft Auto V, accounting for approximately 75.3% of all GTA viewership in 2026 when including both confirmed and likely RP-related streams.
- Analysis of the top 10,000 streams indicates that RP content viewership peaked in 2024 at 87.9% of total GTA content and has remained a consistent majority of the game's streaming presence.
- Inconsistent tagging practices significantly underreport RP popularity; while tags like 'Roleplay' only account for 90 million hours watched, keyword analysis of stream titles reveals 220 million hours of RP content across 67,000 unique channels from January to September 2026.
Build an Online Game In a Simple Database
SpacetimeDB functions as a cloud-native relational database designed to serve as an operating system for real-time multiplayer games.
- SpacetimeDB is a real-time relational database that integrates directly into a program's memory, eliminating the need for network serialization and deserialization between the application and the database.
- The architecture allows game clients to act as read replicas of the server's state, enabling developers to build admin tools, AI agents, or third-party integrations without writing additional server-side code.
- By executing code in a transactional context directly alongside the data, the system simplifies infrastructure and reduces latency compared to traditional client-server models.
Survival Games on Live Streaming with Dune: Awakening
The release of Dune: Awakening serves as a case study for the successful integration of established cinematic intellectual property into the survival MMO genre.
- Dune: Awakening generated 9.2 million hours watched and a peak viewership of 175,000 during its debut week, excluding Steam store page traffic.
- Funcom successfully shifted public sentiment from 11.3% negative at the 2022 announcement to 12.4% negative and 31% positive at launch by emphasizing lore authenticity and high-quality combat mechanics.
- The game's viewership was driven by a mix of top-tier streamers like Shroud (1.1M hours) and a sustainable base of smaller creators, which is critical for the long-term health of live-service MMOs.
Top 10 Female Streamers for June 2024
The streaming landscape for June 2024 saw a slight decline in overall viewership among top female creators, a trend attributed to a relative scarcity of major industry events and collaborative opportunities.
- Emiru maintained the #1 spot among female streamers in June 2024 with an average minute viewership (AMA) of 17.5K, a 1.5K increase from May.
- Spanish-speaking streamers dominated the leaderboard, occupying four of the top ten spots, driven by high-energy IRL content and participation in Twitch Drops campaigns.
- Participation in the 'Rust' Bellum Twitch Drops event significantly boosted viewership for multiple top creators, including rivers_gg, CrystalMolly, and aroyitt.
Top 10 Female Streamers for May 2024
The May 2024 analysis of top female streamers identifies a general decline in viewership across the sector, attributed primarily to a lack of major industry events and collaborative opportunities.
- Emiru maintained the #1 spot among female streamers in May 2024 with an average minute viewership (AMA) of 16K, supported by a strategic partnership with the Rust Twitch Drops campaign.
- Alondrissa became the top Spanish-speaking female streamer with an AMA of nearly 16K, while rivers_gg followed closely at 15K, the latter boosted by her participation in the Kings World Cup.
- Valkyrae remained the leading female streamer on YouTube with an AMA of 11K, driven primarily by her consistent GTA V roleplay content.
Rust Beats Out GTA V with May Twitch Drops Campaign
The May 2024 Twitch Drops campaign for the survival game Rust demonstrates the efficacy of targeted influencer partnerships in driving live-streaming engagement.
- Facepunch Studios' May 2024 Twitch Drops campaign for Rust generated 17.8 million hours watched over a one-week period.
- On May 25, 2024, Rust became the most-watched game on Twitch, surpassing GTA V, with a peak of 264,000 concurrent viewers.
- The campaign's success was driven by a highly targeted strategy involving only 10,000 channels, focusing on top-tier streamers to maximize engagement.
Top 10 VTubers for April 2024
The analysis of the top 10 VTubers for April 2024 highlights a period of transition in the live-streaming landscape as creators shifted away from long-term playthroughs of titles like Monster Hunter World: Iceborne and Elden Ring.
- Usada Pekora (Hololive) claimed the #1 spot for April 2024 with an average minute viewership (AMA) of 38K, driven by high-engagement playthroughs of 'Dragonball Z: Kakarot' and 'Bunny Garden'.
- Overall VTuber viewership declined in April as popular long-play titles like 'Monster Hunter World: Iceborne' and 'Elden Ring' concluded, forcing creators to diversify their content strategies.
- Sakura Miko fell to second place with 23K AMA, while Minato Aqua entered the top 10 at third place with 18K AMA by focusing on consistent, long-term series like 'Cities: Skylines' and 'Elden Ring'.
Top Games in Live Streaming: April 2024
The live streaming landscape experienced a notable contraction in April 2024, with total viewership across the top 100 games declining by 11%, representing a loss of 178 million hours watched compared to the previous month.
- Total viewership across the top 100 streamed games fell by 11% in April 2024, representing a decline of 178 million hours watched compared to March.
- Rust surged into the top 10 games with 36 million hours watched, a 246% increase from March driven by a major game update and server wipe.
- The Fallout franchise experienced a significant viewership renaissance following the April 10th premiere of the Amazon TV series, with Fallout 4 reaching 4.9 million hours watched.
State of Free to Play on Steam in 2024
The analysis evaluates the free-to-play (FtP) segment on Steam, highlighting its dominant share of player engagement and the increasing difficulty for new titles to break through.
- Free-to-play (FtP) games dominate Steam engagement, accounting for 51% of total hours played in 2023 despite being outnumbered by premium releases.
- Market engagement is highly concentrated, with the top 25 FtP titles capturing 88% of all FtP activity and the top five titles holding nearly 60% of concurrent users.
- The FtP sector is stagnant for new entrants, as the top ten FtP games have a mean age of seven years and only two new titles have broken into that tier since 2021.
House Flipper 2: How the Sequel Cleaned Up in the Charts
This analysis examines the commercial success of House Flipper 2 following its December 2023 launch, alongside broader trends in game streaming and platform discovery.
- House Flipper 2 achieved profitability within its first 72 hours of release, selling 131,000 units on Steam against a $2 million development budget and $330,000 in advertising spend.
- The title launched with 850,000 wishlists and maintained a low 4% refund rate, demonstrating strong conversion from its pre-release audience.
- Strategic regional pricing adjustments in Poland and China were critical to sales performance, successfully aligning the $40 price point with local purchasing power.
Plus: What's Grossing the Best in Steam's Summer Sale?
This analysis examines the performance of PC and console games during the 2023 Steam Summer Sale, focusing on how seasonal discounting affects global top-grossing charts.
- Major Steam sales disproportionately benefit established AAA titles and 'long-tail' evergreens that are rarely discounted, such as Elden Ring and Dark Souls III.
- Launching new titles during major Steam sale windows is strategically disadvantageous, as the competitive environment makes it difficult for new releases to gain traction.
- Despite the crowded sale environment in late June 2023, BattleBit Remastered and Dave the Diver successfully maintained high concurrent user counts.
Diablo IV and Rust Dominate Live Streaming Charts: June 11-15
During the period of June 11–15, 2023, the live streaming landscape experienced a significant shift as Diablo IV and Rust outperformed long-standing industry leaders like League of Legends and GTA V. This surge highlights the impact of new game releases and strategic community-driven events on platform viewership metrics.
- Between June 11 and June 15, 2023, Diablo IV and Rust outperformed industry staples League of Legends and GTA V to lead live streaming viewership charts.
- Diablo IV generated 29.1 million hours watched during the five-day period, supported by 76,000 unique streaming channels and a peak viewership of 421,000.
- Rust’s surge in popularity was driven by the 'Bellum' Twitch Drops event, a week-long initiative featuring over 200 creators from the Spanish-speaking community.