The Minecraft and DayZ lovechild is doing fine on its own, it seems. Garry Newman’s Rust is now the fastest selling title on Steam, outselling titles such as DayZ or Starbound. An estimated 600.000 copies of Rust have been sold since it’s December 11th release. In comparison, DayZ sold over 1 million copies and released just several days later, on the 16th.
In just little over a month, Rust has generated about 40% of what revenues Garry’s Mod managed to make in 9 years. According to Garry Newman, the number is actually 55%. This means that the $19.99 tagged survival game has now made around $8.8 million. Not bad at all, considering that Garry Newman’s team is limited to 15 people, and is currently engaged in several other projects as well. Newman promised that the team will complete the game, and will continue to update it even after it is finished. Most pressing concerns are the removal of zombies and the addition of server-wide events.
It seems launching games in alpha states is a new trend, one that seems to be highly profitable. In fact, most of the best-selling games on Steam right now are unpolished Alpha versions. The only concern of the gaming community is whether or not these games will actually get to a polished state, given that they no longer face financial or publishing pressures. The fact that publishers are also not imposing dead-lines for development also raises concerns for users that have decided to spend their money on games such as Rust or DayZ. Still, developers do clearly state that these projects are on-going and that only those that wish to support the developers should acquire them in an alpha state.
Returning to Rust, Garry Newman mentioned the fact that the finished game will most likely cost the same amount, so whether you shed out $19.99 now or wait a couple more months for a more complex and polished product is entirely up to you.