Certain games share similarities with the design of Rust. Facepunch noted that the Arma 2 DayZ mod was an influence on the earliest version of Rust. The DayZ mod featured roaming and looting, with occasional PvP in a survival setting. Facepunch didn't appear to mention the DayZ Epoch mod, which added base-building mechanics. Bases in the regular DayZ mod only involved tents, which were used to store items. DayZ didn't involve hostile animals, but aggressive zombie NPCs essentially filled the same role.

There were similarities between Rust and some Garry's Mod gamemodes that were popular in the years leading up to the development of Rust, including Stranded which had survival/crafting mechanics, some base-building/PvP, and hostile animals (Half-Life 2 NPCs). The DarkRP gamemode almost entirely revolved around obtaining guns, and base raiding (expensive breaching charges were used to blow doors open).

Someone that ran servers for Stranded and DayZ, and then worked behind the scenes in the early days of Rust commented "honestly, I think they took some inspiration from minecraft".

Facepunch developed Rust, which at one point was said to have been a "super janky web browser game" where players "could die randomly. An Ideal Hosting staff member recalled a decade later that the web browser version "was playable but I remember it being laggy at times".

The Facepunch forum had a section for Rust by 12th January 2013.

A Rust wiki existed since atleast 14th June 2013.

On 20th June 2013, the YouTube channel PsiSyndicate starting publishing Rust videos, which were said to have helped popularise the game.

A screencap of one of the videos from July 2013:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3345527300

Around August 2013 onwards, pranksters tricked thousands of players by claiming that Rust keys could be obtained from the Facepunch forum.

Some Rust keys were being sold by 17th September 2013.

Gmod biZ had announced the first custom server on 14th October 2013.

Rust servers in October 2013:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3361651008

By 4th December 2013, Garry had decided on the Steam release date, but it was kept secret.

The first Devblog was dated 7th December 2013.

According to Steam, Rust was released on the Steam Early Access program on 11th December 2013. The PlayRustWiki Steam group made an announcement about the release on 11th December. The Wayback Machine captures of the Store page for the game were redirects until 15th December 2013.

A screenshot of Rust from 29th Dec 2013:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=209988689

I recall that a left-handed player said that they didn't enjoy the early version of Rust because you couldn't rebind keys. The game had a right-handed control layout by default.

Rust Legacy

• http://web.archive.org/web/20241007011340/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(video_game)
  
• https://web.archive.org/web/20230316220212/https://www.wikipunch.com/index.php/Rust_(forum_category)
  
• https://web.archive.org/web/20131215175101/https://store.steampowered.com/app/252490/
  
• https://web.archive.org/web/20241124140406/https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/playrustwiki/announcements/detail/1838890408486287443
  
• https://web.archive.org/web/20130301000000*/http://facepunch.com/forumdisplay.php?f=415

Main index
- Rust through the years