Rust Saw Sales Increase After Adding Female Characters

When Rust added female character models, it was met with much division from the community, perhaps due to the fact that a player character’s gender was assigned based on their SteamID, not the player’s choice. Creator Garry Newman originally added the female models as a social experiment to see how players would react to them, such as whether those playing them would be attacked more or less which would show how players perceive them. Oddly, despite the furor surrounding the assignment of player character gender, the biggest outcome of this addition was actually that Rust saw a marked increase in sales across all platforms.

Newman stated on Twitter that sales of the game had increased by as much as 74 percent when the update was released and for a while the game supported a player base of double that of previously. This was “the opposite of what many said would happen” be continued, which may mirror the surprise of many who decried the addition. The truly surprising thing about this change is that the massive boost in sales and players was a sudden surge while many games typically see a slow but steady increase in players when a major and popular update is released and these sales numbers are usually reserved for events such as Steam sales he noted.

This shows that despite the complaints, the update was, in fact, popular and the fuss may simply be the result of a vocal minority of negative community members. Let’s hope that the success of Rust following this addition will make other games consider being bolder regarding gender in the future and see it as less of a questionable topic that may cause issues for their game.