Facepunch Studios confirm their plan for the Linux version of Rust, to be split from Windows & Mac

So facepunch is admitting they cant hack it and suck ass. Sad.

Too bad I can't get a refund.

1. Abandon Linux support, no longer sell the game for Linux;
2. "Nobody plays the Linux version! See? Only 0.1%!"
3. Segregate Linux players, so they won't ever find a populated server.

Сause-and-effect relations are strong with this Garry.

I bought Rust way back in 2014 when it was still in early Alpha stages and it was a lot of fun back then, but they kept making changes and the game got less and less fun to play. The last straw for me was when they added permanent Gender and Race Locked characters based on your Steam ID. I won't ever play again until they remove the Gender and Race locks and bring back Linux Support. Linux players should be able to play on the same servers as their Winblows and Mac counterparts

I don't really have the time for this type of game anyway.

One more thing that comes to mind: I've hardly played Rust so far, because I was always immediately attacked by an angry mob. It's almost impossible for a novice to get into the game. I would have played Rust a lot more if I'd met people like XPander.

The problem has now been solved. ;)

But joking aside: Linux players are often much more cooperative than the average gamer. A game like Rust can benefit enormously if the cooperative players are separated. Sure, it's bad for people who like war. I like war too. I love to play CSGO for example. But what happens in Rust is often just unfair and complete coincidence. This is no fun in the long run. I'll try Rust again when the crossplay is gone.

Anticheat working with Proton will be the next big thing. As much as I want Linux ecosystem to grow, I really can't justify the expectation of a linux port. It may not popular opinion but developers can probably make more money instead of supporting Linux. FURTHERMORE many of the supposedly native Linux ports are lacking. What good is the game running on Linux if it's not properly developed and optimized for the platform?
Proton is as far as I see it a great solution for developers who have modest interest in Linux but can't justify supporting the platform.

And in chosing Vulkan to ensure the game complies with Proton, indirectly it will pave the way for a future where crossplatform software are used. This will inevitably lead to native ports for all platforms and the optimization will be largely the same for them. The way I see it the important issues for Linux gaming, at this point in time with our 1% marketshare, isn't native support but anticheat working with Proton or/and Proton being further polished (D9VK maturing more for example).

It is interesting how accepting/resigned to the fact that proton is the best way to game on linux these days. When it first came out many said as long as native ports dont suffer well lets be brutally honest if its not from Feral vp or nightdrive its not coming natively to linux. Proton is the reality of linux gaming dont get me wrong am not down on it think its a great investment by valve and a sensible business decision vs windows and Epic store. But back to my original point we kind of all got to the point of meh what you going to do very quickly.

The reason for this makes perfect sense. Linux has 1% marketshare. In my opinion, with some exceptions, making a Linux port is not worth it. Because of that I am content playing games through Proton as long as it runs well.
But if ever the time comes where Linux gains 10% marketshare, I will no longer be happy with Proton and demand native port. Because at that point developers will have little to no excuse for doing a native release, and I will consider it a big negative if developers rely on Proton.

Oh I know i get it but it went from being a big do not want to this is the future. I am hoping the number of liunx gamers increases as much as its not always been a brilliant vocale for linux gaming linus video annoying entitled gaming on linux doesnt suck now and windows should be worried if nothing else have the potentinal to be seen by 9 million people that are subbed to linus. But even with that and the funding valve continue to pump in we are sitting at 1 percent still.

You mistakenly assume that the average game dev knows how to install Linux. Or use any development tool not called Visual Studio.

That also goes the other way round. While I'm not a game dev, I am somewhat game-dev adjacent. And I've been doing C and C++ on Linux for nearly 20 years now.

During that time, I've, from time to time, tried to set up Visual Studio on VMs, to make my FLOSS projects compile there and offer an easy way for contributors using Windows to jump in. And I've found it a profoundly dev-hostile environment.

On my day job (again not game dev), I've been put into a project that uses C# (with a whole set of stuff on top). I had less problems with acclimatizing to C# from my C++ knowledge than the absolute uncomfortableness of the Visual Studio glob.

Really, it's more about the fact that the concepts, assumptions and foci of Windows development vs. Linux development is completely different. They attack the problem from opposite angles and arrive at different solutions. So if you're accustomed to one, it's difficult to change to the other.

I wouldn't even necessarily say that one way is better than the other, although I do have my own opinions and existing workflows edged into my brain.

Yeah, some of that because Microsoft desperately wants to not follow standards, to leverage its monopoly to keep developers trapped in Windows-land. But some of that is a consequence of history. And some of that is just pure coincidence, two solutions being developed at the same time.

Seems like every time these guys make an announcement about Linux, they live up to their name.

Seems like every time these guys make an announcement about Linux, they live up to their name.

Well, it's kinda unlikely we'll ever hear about them again. At least here.

Seems like every time these guys make an announcement about Linux, they live up to their name.

Well, it's kinda unlikely we'll ever hear about them again. At least here.

Correct. Unless they suddenly support us again in future, this is likely the last ever post about them :)

Seems like every time these guys make an announcement about Linux, they live up to their name.

Well, it's kinda unlikely we'll ever hear about them again. At least here.

Correct. Unless they suddenly support us again in future, this is likely the last ever post about them :)

See I'm kind of glad I was all ready aware of some of the stuff Facepunch used to pull back in the day with Garry's mod. Nothing about this saga with Rust has really surprised me. Well at least we won't be hearing about them round here, which ironically is how most places are when it comes to Rust seems the last year or two the game has really died off player base wise.

I Hope valve will hurry up with the EAC as the windows client in wine (last time i tried, non eac server) worked way way better anyway, with double the framerates of native client

What if that would mean installing a root level spy daemon?

Don't really care, if its secure enough and enables me to play some games. If there would be massive reports about the security issues with it, yeah sure it will be bad then. But im not that much of a tin foil hat guy.

edit: and before someone comes calling.


I use linux beacuse of the flexibility. Security is nice bonus to have but not the end of the world.


Last edited by Xpander on 10 Aug 2019 at 3:30 pm UTC

Well I think the fact that they not even test their game(s) on all platforms they are selling them for says a lot about the QA of the game developer. If you do it like that its no wonder that things will break sooner or later. Same with the developer of ARK. The longer you neglect one platform the harder it gets to get it on par with the other ones and thus the support will be dropped entirely in the end since it would take too much effort to get it on par again.

The reason for this makes perfect sense. Linux has 1% marketshare. In my opinion, with some exceptions, making a Linux port is not worth it. Because of that I am content playing games through Proton as long as it runs well.
But if ever the time comes where Linux gains 10% marketshare, I will no longer be happy with Proton and demand native port. Because at that point developers will have little to no excuse for doing a native release, and I will consider it a big negative if developers rely on Proton.

As long as Proton works fine or whatever works fine and offers the same experience as Windows I don't care what the underlying technology is, frankly speaking. Proton is really impressive. Of course I'd prefer native ports and Proton has some limitations (especially w/ Alt-Tab unless you play in window mode) but overall it works fine.

Sharing my opinion on the Facepunch post from Garry to the Linux RUST community:

It seems a relatively frank and reasonable communication and certainly a lot better than keeping quiet and leaving Linux people in the dark. Even if RUST is going to die on Linux as a result of this, I personally have played lots of it and enjoyed it on Linux and for that I'm grateful.

Yes, the Linux side has been badly supported over the years - It was built for Linux without the QA testing on Linux that professional game development demands. The recent updates to the game have introduced bugs and issues, and the game is currently not working well at all (but I've still been playing it). I actually could live with Facepunch continuing to do a poor job on Linux (e.g. not making much effort in testing or bugfixing) but at least keep the game working and in parity with the Win/Mac versions.

The stats that Garry shares are not painting the correct picture of Linux marketshare. His stats suggest that Linux users account for 0.1% of the total player-base. This *is* true right now, but when the game was working properly under Linux (i.e. March 2019 and earlier) then the Linux share was 0.34% (and it would still be approx that level if the game was working better on Linux).

I examined various publicly-accessible RUST stats, and Garry's suggestion that Linux is a Cheater's Sanctuary is completely off. My own calculations suggest that even if every single one of the 217 unique Linux players was cheating, then that would account for 28% of the total cheaters (i.e. a minimum of 72% of the cheaters are using Windows). This is a ridiculous notion (100% of Linux users are cheating), and I personally believe that ~ 99% of cheaters on RUST are doing it from the Windows platform.

Unity does not currently support IL2CPP scripting on Linux builds, and Facepunch wants to use IL2CPP for future RUST development. If Unity was updated so that IL2CPP worked on Linux builds, then potentially Facepunch could refactor the Linux client into the regular development cycle. I sent Garry an email asking if this could be considered, and that the current Plan could be dropped if the Unity situation was resolved. I also shared my stats analysis with Garry too.

Into the future, hopefully this will all turn around and the game will "come back" to Linux.


Last edited by g000h on 10 Aug 2019 at 6:46 pm UTC

Facepunch can't (be arsed to) learn how to code for Linux, so they're giving up. Not really surprising, I have come to expect little and less from this third-rate developer with their openly Linux-hostile lead dev.

I spent a lot of time in this game in the early days (back when there was a single map) and I have a lot of fond memories with it, but it has never performed well, and has frequently been unplayable. I'm disappointed but not surprised that Facepunch are cutting their losses and running away. I doubt their OSX build has a particularly good outlook either.

just make sure it works with proton. Then it's fine.

I bought at the launch and I had the game for 3 years, it was long before Steam had refund option.
I wished and hoped that things was different but they lied and they didn't give a "F" for who paid for, as a customer it's the worst service by company and guy which tries to manipulate other people with some kind of "confirmation bias" that they believes, most of us linuxers just asked a playable game not the piece of cr*p that they sold, after all, EULA sucks and guess what, I think that they just trying to avoid a lawsuit for refunds.

Well, I won't have anything back, their attitude was so disgusting and because that I deleted from my Library all games from Facepunch and Garry related after their bitter post against Linux customers, anyway, IMHO, as they said "linuxers are insignificant with their 0.1% share" just pull out Linux version and give the money back, we gonna spend somewhere else, it's easy.:D


Last edited by eddie-foss on 12 Aug 2019 at 7:56 am UTC

Bottom line. FU Linux gamers. Thanks but I'll pass this one. Like forever

I feel like commenting that there are lots of other Studios (mainly AAA) which haven't made the effort to release a Linux game at all (or very rarely). And yet, thanks to Proton and WINE, plenty of Linux gamers are buying from those Studios and helping to line their pockets. It would seem appropriate to detest those companies *more*.


Last edited by g000h on 12 Aug 2019 at 1:16 pm UTC