Rust continues to experience a resurgence in popularity, like many games during the pandemic. Rust's popularity, however, isn't simply due to more gamers having time at home. Rust is riding a wave of support set off by a collection of Twitch streamers returning to the game together. Regardless of the reason, Rust's success is more than apparent, as for the third week running Rust has taken the top spot in Steam's weekly top-sellers list.
Published Sunday morning, Steam's list shows that Rust is once again ranked first overall for game sellers by revenue, not by unit sales. Since Rust at full price costs $39.99, that means other games further down the list may have sold more copies on Steam but did not make more money due to pricing differences. Suffice to say, Rust's developer Facepunch Studios likely prefers to be number one in revenue.
The reason for Rust's surge in popularity is two-fold. One reason is the pandemic, which has led to more people being home from work or school, and thus more people playing games. The second is the launch of OfflineTV's Rust RP servers. The OfflineTV Twitch streamer community invited many of Twitch's most popular streamers to participate, and the result is a lot of fans of OfflineTV and their streamer friends wanting to experience Rust for themselves.
Whether or not Rust can maintain its current success levels is going to be interesting to watch. Many of the top streamers playing on OfflineTV's Rust server have talked about being burnt out, but for the time being streamers have stuck with playing Rust. However, Twitch streamers are always up for swapping to something else as they get bored or distracted.
The remaining top 10 for this week on Steam have some interesting new entries. Taking second place behind Rust is the space shooter Everspace 2, which could easily take the top spot next week. In fourth place is the new Dyson Sphere Program strategy-sim, which just launched in Early Access. In ninth is Skul: The Hero Slayer, a 2D platformer that just left early access.
Making up the rest of the top 10 is a list of 2020 favorites. The Valve Index VR Kit is in third place, Cyberpunk 2077 is fifth, Red Dead Redemption 2 is sixth, Phasmophobia is seventh, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's latest Operation is eighth, and the co-op survival game Raft is tenth.
Rust is available now on PC, with PS4 and Xbox One ports planned.