Facepunch Studios, the developers of the well-acclaimed survival game Rust, have released their yearly review. The review provides a great bit of transparency into the success of the game, as well as a few strange metrics.
One thing that has been pointed out is that Rust has officially made more than Gary’s Mod. While this might seem like a strange thing to point out, some people may not know that Facepunch is responsible for GMod as well.
Speaking on the success of GMod, Facepunch provided some interesting statistics, including the following:
- GMod has officially sold 16,900,292 copies
- Conversely, GMod has been refunded 468,772 times
- GMod is also on the wishlists of 1,302,065 Steam accounts
- Over the last 15 years, GMod has grossed $108,151,789, including VAT, DLC, Bundles, and in-game sales
In terms of the success of Rust, Facepunch spoke on their transfer of personnel and how this has affected the game.
“Early this year we stopped doing full-time prototypes and moved most of those staff into the Rust team,” they announced in a section bluntly titled “Wasteful and Underappreciated.” “The pattern that developed was that we had a bunch of talented developers that were working on stuff for 2 years waiting for me to basically throw it all away. They didn’t feel part of the team because they operated like satellite studios, only really needing to communicate with each other.”
Garry Newman, the author of this announcement and founder of Facepunch, pulled no punches in blatantly stating his/Facepunch’s faults and how they intend to fix it. It’s a wonderfully refreshing thing to see developers taking full responsibility and outlining how they intend to improve.
Speaking on the things that have been thrown away, Newman states that they intend to make use of the resources now that everyone is organized and feeling worthwhile. Specifically, Newman says that “There’s opportunities to exploit the content we created and we have plans to do just that.”
Of these “exploitations” comes Chippy, a game that made it “out of the incubator just before the incinerator blast shield doors were closing,” as Newman says. As a newer game, Chippy hasn’t quite earned the same sales and whatnot as Rust and GMod, only having sold a bit over 9,000 copies so far. Still, it stands with very positive reviews and is great proof that the Facepunch team is dedicated to doing more than one thing at a time.
Facepunch has a whole new decade ahead of them. If they continue on as they have, they’ll keep making beloved games that plenty of people spend hundreds upon hundreds of hours on, as is the case with GMod and Rust.
