It's been five years since Rust arrived, treating players to dangling dongs, rampaging bears, and a ruthless multiplayer survival experience. To celebrate this anniversary, a big, world-altering update is now live. Electricity has been added to the mix of tree-chopping, rock-breaking, gun-crafting, base-building, and (recently) hot-air ballooning. Also, you can now wear underpants.
The Electric Anniversary, as it's called, is now live and contains a number of electrical components: batteries, switches, pressure pads, splitters, timers, and other various odds-and-ends that will allow players to use electricity to power lights, automation, clocks, CPUs, defenses, traps, and god knows what else. Power generation is currently (ha ha, current) supplied by solar panels and windmills. Here's a nice video from Rustafied to introduce you to the basics.
Along with the exciting new electrical components, the update adds an M39 rifle, provides an overhaul to how bows work, brings some improvements to the cargo ships, and as I said earlier, adds underwear. This last item (called a censorship option in the devlog) should be helpful for streamers who are penalized for showing bare butts, wangs, boobs, and muffs while playing the game for others.
Finally, in a post on Facepunch, Garry Newman delivered some stats about Rust's development. In five years, Rust has sold 7,457,075 copies, grossing $110,313,646, which includes bundles, DLC, and in-game sales. Its highest concurrent player count was 71,801, just this past month following the balloon update. It's also sold over 4 million skins, and the creators of those skins have earned nearly $2 million combined from those sales. That's some shockingly (electricity, get it?) good news.
