No, you’re not supposed to fly, walk through walls, see through walls, teleport or live forever in Rust. Cheating in Rust is not tolerated, and the game’s latest update introduced CheatPunch, an anti-hacking and cheating measure that will ban cheaters without any notice. Quite a few Rust cheaters have already been spanked by the ban-hammer. The current count shows that 4,621 players were caught cheating and were permanently banned. And you’re not just getting banned from one server. Once you’re kicked and tagged as a cheater, you can kiss your copy of Rust goodbye, as access to all servers will be restricted.
Currently, CheatPunch is on duty on all official servers, as well as unofficial servers that choose to run it. This will soon change, as developer Facepunch Studios aims to make it mandatory on any and all servers. “We’re testing it out on our official servers to make sure it all works before forcing it on everyone else.” they clarified. Of course, like any anti-cheating measures, CheatPunch is not guaranteed to detect all cheaters or hackers, but it’s definitely a start. “CheatPunch isn’t the answer to all of our prayers. It’s a stop gap solution. It’s going to get rid of a bunch of cheaters, but it’s not hard to get around (by design). We fully expect cheats to be touted as ‘CheatPunch proof’ quite soon. That’s cool. We’re never going to be finished fighting.” explained the developers, showing a commitment to making Rust as fair of a game as they can.
A fence will not keep hackers at bay, but CheatPunch just might
Almot 5.000 players have bit the dust, but that number is insignificant, compared to the approximately 1 million current players of the survival game. Still, it’s a start, and we’re glad that cheating is being addressed. As for appeals, cheaters won’t get any. “If you get kicked from the official servers with the message that you’ve been banned then you have been caught. You’re a naughty boy. You know what you have done. You won’t get unbanned. We know it was your 9 year old cousin. We know your computer got hijacked. We know that the CIA is getting you banned from all your games on Steam so you will join them in the hunt for aliens. We’re aiming to get a site set up for people that have been banned so they can go and see proof that they’ve been caught.”
Yesterday’s update also covers some other minor changes to Rust, as follows:
Cheating is prohibited, weird naked cave-man pornography…not so much.
- Resources should maybe hopefully not kill you anymore while harvesting them
- Wolves should actually scare other AI when they are chasing or attacking something
- Last chunk of rock should be on the ground instead of hovering
- You can’t place shelters ontop of people anymore and lock them in
- You can’t build stuff on top of large spiked walls anymore
- You can’t build barricades on top of barricades anymore
- Fixed a minor issue with spawning wildlife and resource nodes which could cause some console spam on the server
- AI figures out it can’t get to you much sooner and knows to retreat
- Shelters decay is active for sure and they will disappear
- Metal window bars are thinner and easier to shoot out of
All-in-all, this was a great update to the game. Rust cheats won’t be eliminated completely and utterly, but it’s a promising start. The number of already banned players will likely grow in the following days, and if Facepalm keeps bringing in new ways to combat cheating, the game servers will probably be a lot cleaner in the near future. You can now calmly return to building your shack and bashing in skulls with a rock, knowing that CheatPunch has your back, and will punch Rust cheaters right in the gut!