This will play the version of Rust you know and love.
What is the 'Play Experimental' option?
This will play the experimental version. This is the reboot version we have made from scratch.
Why not get rid of the old version?
Because the experimental version isn't anywhere near ready yet. We haven't yet implemented all of the features that are in the old version.
When will you get rid of the old version?
We probably won't ever fully get rid of it. Even when it's done we'll probably still have a legacy branch for you to go back and remember it. It'll be retired when we're confident that the experimental branch contains all of the same gameplay features as the old version, and a much larger majority of people are playing it.
So is the Experimental branch going away?
No. The experimental branch will just be a more up to date version of the live branch.
How will experimental get more popular with just one server?
We'll add more servers as time goes on. At the moment we're testing specific features and server stability - so it's better if we have a large amount of people joining our single server to test it.
What about bandwidth? Will we be getting updates every 5 minutes?
No. The default branch will be updated once a week - to accompany the devblog. But if you subscribe to the experimental branch you will
get live updates as they are committed.
Experimental has no servers! I can't play!
Sometimes our test server will be down. This is to be expected because of the speed at which we work. Please play the old version if you require stability. Experimental will get better over time.
Can I run an Experimental server?
Not yet, sorry.
Why the change?
The huge majority of our players are totally unaware of the work we're doing on the experimental branch. They think we've done nothing for 6 months. We want to make it more apparent that we are actually doing stuff.
