Gmod Stranded (developed in 2007) was strikingly similar to Rust, so it's partially seen as its predecessor. One of the communities that ran a Stranded server (Gmod biZ) had a rules list which noted that stealing was allowed as long as it wasn't excessive, and killing was allowed for valid reasons (such as war), but war couldn't be declared for no reason. Players were not allowed to take more food or resources than they needed as "this isn't a free-for-all where everyone is against each other."

A cultural issue with Stranded (and strict roleplay servers) was that nobody was allowed to fire the first shot of a firefight. If there was no justified reason for starting a war, then there could never be a war. Players produced guns and wanted to use them, but simply weren't allowed to, although it may have been true that senseless killing was sometimes a bad idea - when Garry visited the Gmod biZ server he was repeatedly spawnkilled, which earnt the spawnkillers some punishment.

When Rust was released, the playerbase moved to it and seemed to enjoy having a larger map (even if Rust Legacy only had one map at the time), and also enjoyed the ability to indulge in unrestricted violence. The unrestricted violence created a new issue though, because the scene had gone from one extreme (no violence) to the other (only violence), and there was no way back - Stranded servers depopulated as Rust was the new thing.

You used to see players on Stranded being creative and just surviving (sometimes being social), but now on Rust there was no room for creativity - everything you'd build would be attacked, and survival seemed trivial when killing was so rampant that you'd be shot every few minutes. On some servers you might not even be allowed to be friendly, as solo/duo/trio servers had strict rules on group sizes - being friendly with a player might have them counted as a teammate, which could potentially put you over the group size limit.

An arms race developed where server longevity was as low as 12 hours, with players constantly looking for a freshly wiped server where they could try to beat other players by being the first to craft "end game" weapons to dominate the server - routinely depopulating servers unless they wiped almost daily. Players were motivated to join teams just to work together on winning the arms race. This push towards competitive team gameplay was exacerbated by a door key system which made the game too awkward for solo players to manage a base alone; eventually the game saw 80% of players being in a team, with only only 0.3% of bases being creative buildings.

The culture got even more aggressive when an update to Rust introduced components that you needed to collect in order to craft guns, which were only available from landmarks. Before, you could build pretty much anywhere you wanted on the map and craft weapons to defend your base. But now, you had to build near these landmarks, otherwise you wouldn't be able to get the components for guns. So you had the entire playerbase now trying to build in the same few areas to compete for gun components just so that they could craft guns to defend themselves. This forced competition further eliminated the creative and social culture of the scene.

Sentry guns, the team system, gun skins, and weapon spray patterns all spoke to the PvP direction the game was clearly headed. Rust catered for an aggressive playerbase; posts on the Rust subreddit (by players that stopped playing the game because they didn't enjoy this new direction) highlighting this disparity, or asking what could be done to recultivate some creative or social gameplay were rudely told to stop complaining because they didn't play the game anymore. It was as if being driven out of the game had lost them the right to any opinion about it.

An article speculating on the influence of Stranded on Rust, hosted on the Gmod Archive:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/gca1/discussions/0/4309452818496305898/

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