Today Rust players were hit with the awful news that 25 of Facepunch’s European Rust servers were destroyed in a fire at a data center in Strasbourg, France.
Thankfully, due to the way Rust works, this isn’t the end of the world for players, even if many are upset about their lost progress. Many Rust servers are now regularly wiped every month or so, anyway. At most players would have lost up to a week of progression.
Update:
We've confirmed a total loss of the affected EU servers during the OVH data centre fire. We're now exploring replacing the affected servers.Data will be unable to be restored.
— Rust (@playrust) March 10, 2021
It is a little upsetting to read through social media. Many players have forgotten that this was a real-life event where property was damaged and people may have been hurt.
There are some calling for instant compensation for lost hard work and server progression. Understandably, people may have been grinding all week for their progress to be completely removed with no record of it whatsoever. You can understand their frustration.
Despite this, the design of Rust means that many servers are wiped monthly anyway, so progress is a fickle thing in the game’s current state. A momentary hiccup like this, which Facepunch is resolving quickly, isn’t much of a problem for the majority of players.
At this moment in time, however, Facepunch is probably working hard to restore server services across Europe. Several servers have already reappeared, allowing players to jump back into Rust on the same day that the servers went down. Pretty impressive.
We've got EU servers slowly coming back online – All game progress is reset.
[EU] Facepunch 3 – 137.74.4.207:28015
[EU] Facepunch 4 – 137.74.4.207:28020
[EU] Facepunch Small 1 – 137.74.4.207:28025
[EU] Facepunch Large 1 – 137.74.4.197:28015
[EU] Facepunch 5 – 137.74.4.197:28020 pic.twitter.com/cdXVQg0KNK— Rust (@playrust) March 10, 2021
It’s an unfortunate time for something like this to happen as Rust is currently available in closed beta on Xbox. Many players will have only just started playing.
Getting access to the closed beta is also difficult at the moment. The beta precedes a full launch expected in the coming weeks, although no further details have been announced regarding an exact date and time.
Rust reached further popularity earlier this year with a number of multiplayer servers playing host to the biggest Twitch streaming and content creator personalities. The console launch is a hotly anticipated release with many excited to finally try out the game after years of waiting.
The console version was already delayed due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, and hopefully, this loss of servers doesn’t postpone the launch of the game much longer, for the sake of the company rather than the eagerly awaiting fans.