Rust Reaches New All-time Highs on Twitch and Steam
Rust is currently experiencing a golden age. The game has broken the threshold of a million viewers on Twitch and set a new activity record on Steam.
Rust set a new activity record on Steam. Last night, 134,483 users were simultaneously playing Facepunch's game. This is quite an achievement given the work's age - it debuted in early access over seven years ago.
The previous record was 125,000 and was reached in April 2020. Rust was one of the many games that benefited from the coronavirus pandemic and last year the game often exceeded 100,000 players, which was practically unheard of before March 2020.
The new activity record shows that the game is doing better and better, but it's by no means a dramatic jump in popularity. The situation is completely different with streaming results. On January 3, the number of people watching Rust broadcasts on Twitch exceeded 1.2 million. Before, the game has never achieved comparable results on this platform.
Increased interest in broadcasts featuring Facepunch's game stems from the fact that at the end of the year dozens of popular streamers, such as Shroud, xQc, Pokimane, Disguised Toast, Sodapoppin or Myth, started to play on a single game server (created by OfflineTV).
With such an accumulation of streaming celebrities, it was only a matter of time before some kind of scandal broke out. And we didn't have to wait long for that. During a poor match, xQc unjustly accused another player of so-called stream sniping. This term is used when one of the participants of the game watches rival's broadcast to gain advantage, e.g. by discovering his position on the map.
xQc was criticized by many colleagues for his behavior and quickly apologized, but this did not completely calm the emotions. Pokimane stopped playing on the server, claiming that it no longer brings her any fun. Of course, all this drama only increased the audience's interest in Rust streams and most likely also helped to achieve the new activity record on Steam.
