A mysterious Steam listing for Rust 2 appeared out of nowhere this week, and for a brief, beautiful moment, the survival game community lost its mind. Then Garry Newman stepped in and killed the dream with a single word.
The Steam page that started everything
A Reddit post in r/playrust went up with the very measured, very calm title "RUST 2 IS REAL?!" The post included an image of an incomplete Steam page for something called Rust 2, and sure enough, the listing exists on Steam right now under app ID 2869120. For a few minutes, that was enough to send fans spiraling.
Here's the thing, though: SteamDB flagged the page almost immediately. A red-banner warning on the database site reads that staff have marked the app as suspicious, warning users it "may be malicious or impersonating another product." That should have been the first sign something was off.
The Reddit account that posted the original discovery, a user called 'Freeqncy', was created just minutes before the post went live. Fresh account, big claim, zero post history. The classic setup.
Facepunch COO adds fuel, then walks it back
What made this genuinely interesting for about five minutes was the response from Alistair McFarlane, Facepunch's COO. Less than five minutes after the original post appeared, McFarlane dropped into the thread with a single line: "You saw nothing."
That kind of response from an actual studio executive will do things to a fanbase. Speculation went vertical. Was this a soft confirmation? A tease? A very deliberate non-denial?
Then McFarlane clarified, because of course he did. "I visit the subreddit a lot, and I sometimes see shit posts and comments that cause confusion," he wrote in a follow-up reply. "Now you're all questioning yourselves, is this real? Maybe?"
So yes, the Facepunch COO was having fun at the community's expense on what he described as a slow Thursday.
danger
SteamDB has flagged the Rust 2 Steam listing as suspicious and potentially malicious. Do not attempt to download or purchase anything from that page.
Newman ends the conversation
That left the door technically open until Garry Newman himself closed it. In a message to PC Gamer, Newman was characteristically brief: "Nope. We're not making Rust 2." Asked about the Steam page itself, Newman said he has "no idea at all" where it came from.
That is about as definitive as it gets from the founder of the studio that made Rust.
The irony here is that Rust 2 is not a completely alien concept. Back in 2023, Newman mentioned it in passing during his very public criticism of Unity's pricing changes, writing that "Rust 2 definitely won't be a Unity game." That one offhand comment has lived rent-free in the community ever since, and this week's Steam page was all it took to reignite the speculation.
Rust itself hit Steam Early Access in 2013, making it 13 years old. The game hit full release in 2018 and has continued receiving updates, including some genuinely entertaining additions like water wheels that can be powered by handcuffed players. For a game that old, it still pulls serious numbers.
What this means for Rust players
The short answer is: nothing changes. Rust is still getting updates, Facepunch is still actively developing it, and there is no sequel in the pipeline according to the studio's own founder. The mysterious Steam page remains unexplained, the SteamDB warning stands, and McFarlane's "You saw nothing" has been thoroughly debunked as a bit of community trolling.
For anyone who wants to keep up with what Facepunch is actually building, the studio's s&box sandbox game is arriving on Steam on April 28, which is a real, confirmed announcement rather than a suspicious listing from a day-old Reddit account.
Keep an eye on the latest gaming news for any future Facepunch announcements, and check out latest reviews if you're looking for your next survival game fix while Rust keeps doing its thing. Make sure to check out more:
