Community Update 127

Before I get into the community's work, I thought I'd update everyone with some Rust stats. We've actually let some milestones sail by since the start of 2017 without acknowledging them: we currently sit at over 5.2 million copies of Rust sold, and at more than 1.2 million player made skins bought. It would have been great to celebrate those figures at 5 million and 1 million, but we can't complain if we're celebrating with more. On 2nd Feb 2017 we had 68,234 concurrent players on the servers, our highest ever. Thanks so much. The header decision was made three days ago when veys popped on the Rust forums (and reddit) and asked what we thought of their artwork. I thought to myself, "That's next week's header!" I also thought that it was good enough for other people to claim they made it. I'll give it about six months before it gets plonked on the artwork section of the Steam Community by someone with more symbols than actual letters in their name. Pro-tip: there's more people in this image than at first glance. Really great job, veys.

Do you know hard it is to describe something so beautiful that there are no words for it? I do. 'Scotty' Swemba has been playing about with the new admin demo recording and playback tools, and he's turned a Rust raid into a fdslkgj klg. See? The letters actively avoid forming words. The new demos record a chunk of action and enable people to replay what went on from any angle, at varying speeds. Swemba took it as slowly as he could, capturing moments that are too fleeting to see, but in his hands are framed and admired. Every frame a diorama of Rust. I have little else to add because the results really do speak for themselves. There's a frame rate joke about this, but I was too busy admiring the video to come up with it.

There was talk on the reddits about a base on the sub's server that was so attractively designed it was unraidable. To make it worse, it was made by someone called 'Mom', and that's the sort of emotional manipulation that Rust is built upon. I popped on and made a little gallery of it when I spotted the excellent, homely job she'd made by decorating with paintings. I had to brighten these up a little, but otherwise they're exactly what's on the server. Despite my warnings, they also allowed PitchDank's Cody17 in for a viewing. Cosy as a base defense? That might just be crazy enough to work. Great work, Lissa.

In almost any other week, dearsomeone's gorgeously crafted Rust LCD game would be the header. He dropped it on reddit with a lovely bait-and-switch title of Anyone else miss old Rust? For such a simple thing, there's loads of details: the server selection and Crossbow nerf joke; roof camp buttons, etc. And it has that grimy look of a favourite toy. Really amazing work, Jon. Have a look at his previous Rust cinematics here. They're all pretty special.

I don't cover people like Holdacious enough, just because it's tough to catch a Let's Player at the start of a long series. I can recommend you just watch him, because he's generally pretty jolly. He sent me a video that doesn't need much prior knowledge to enjoy. If you've watched any Rust Youtuber even semi-regularly in the past year, you'll get what's going on. Watch! Man, that was cool, but you're going to wake up with a horse's head in your bed, Holdy.

1.2 million skins sold and Jorge Xtab has probably looked at each and every one. Here's his pick of the week.

Crunch. Drink it in. That will probably be the only time Phil Collins is on this blog. Via RITLIN.

Think you're working on something awesome? Tell me all about it. Share your base designs, show off a game-mode from your server, or have you done a cool thing with Code Locks and Vending Machines? There's a dedicated forum post, or you can fish for upvotes in the Subreddit. I also shuffle around the the Steam Community, so feel free to show me to things from there. You can follow and respond to Rust on Twitter, and I'm on there as well. I can't respond to everything, but I read every comment and take it all in.