A little bit off subject, but are server owners seeing a lower player population lately? I run 3 low-pop servers anywhere from 10 – 50 players per server. Over the last 3-5 months the population seems to be heading downwards. I don't play Rust myself anymore I'm simply rusted out, but do keep the servers fully updated and wipe weekly. Just wondered if other server owners are seeing this trend?

I'm not a You-Tuber and don't advertise. With the Likes of Battlefield and other Tripple A releases on the horizon, I'm contemplating pulling the plug.

I have seen the players slowly disappear since the advent of covid 19 , I believe that a lot of players, especially younger ones have been limited in using home internet as their parents are using the available pc/laptop to work from home, A lot of people may have also cut down on internet costs (due to lack of finance) by reducing internet time to what is required for their work,
Home schooling may also be a factor,

My low pop server has been steady, make of that what you will.

I run a server for my country (Bulgaria) and while our neighbours Romania, Turkey have for example at least 50-100 population in one server and [TR] servers are a lot doesn't matter empty or low pop or mid pop or whatever, they have a pop at all. There are NO other servers in my country except mine but only have a max of 3 regular players that I know their names with closed eyes and another 5 players (one group) that play from time to time while waiting for Facepunch 4 to wipe at the end of the month. I am running the server x2 but still should have players even if I make it xMilion or whatever else right and people join from my country when there are no other servers? Nope, does not work like this...

While 2021 January Facepunch announced the first twitch drops and campaign in twitch and without even asking 2 streamers joined to play Rust and found my server and had 60/60 full month, also one streamer in my country used to host broken xWhatever where its vanilla but you pickup 5k rocks from the ground and they tried to turn game into RP from where they actually came (FiveM, MInecraft) with his friends that stream stream too and opened it for his viewers and he had 20 pop instantly, I had 60 cuz one girl used to stream 2h without knowing how to make anything only respawning and walking around the map but 300 people watched her... and she used to call the game new "meta" but this meta died and February again nothing... new players that used to buy game on Christmas sale or play at all abandoned it, nobody stream it in my country, only couple of players continued to play that used to play rust and from long time ago.
Apart from my story, if you have normal EU server made for everyone in Europe, not like me open for everyone but name is not targeted for the English community you should have success and not sure why player base goes down... If you had players before at least around 30-50 as you said and you combine servers so your players can gather in one server also do advertisement somewhere that server have pop and people are lazy joining when everything is ready so if they already see people inside will join too...

Btw not sure if player base is low or just a lot of new servers are opened...

The problem is that there are a lot of Rust servers online and worst of all, any child on their computer can run a Rust server without paying 1 Cent. What Facepunch would have to do was ban Rust servers on regular (home) computers which in 90% of cases is made by children.

jure12

The problem is that there are a lot of Rust servers online and worst of all, any child on their computer can run a Rust server without paying 1 Cent. What Facepunch would have to do was ban Rust servers on regular (home) computers which in 90% of cases is made by children.

Absolutely no logic in that answer at all !,
You want FP to ban customers from using their software that encourages more people playing their game, What method is FP going to use to determine which servers are home based and which ones are Host based and what reason are they going to use that is covered in their terms of use to restrict home servers ? , What criteria are YOU using to postulate the theory that they are 90% children ? , Did you have to prove your age when starting your server or renting one from a server host ? ,
 If i join a well run server where there is no admin abuse and it has all the ingredients that i like to have a good playing experience i dont ask the admin "how old are you ?" ,  htf would you know and wtf would you care ?

Same here since last forced wipe, like flipping the switch... since update hit my servers still dead. Had pop around 30- 50 players, on one, 20+ on other server.. after update 0 😒

jure12

The problem is that there are a lot of Rust servers online and worst of all, any child on their computer can run a Rust server without paying 1 Cent. What Facepunch would have to do was ban Rust servers on regular (home) computers which in 90% of cases is made by children.

Ex. You might be right that every child opens his server from home and that flood the list at the end with a lot of empty servers. But Facepunch can't ban for this because a lot of people (I do it too, sometimes) open test server from their computer or a lot of BIG servers or small if they have the hardware and connection speed opens their servers from home using secondary machine old pc or new server to host it on their own.

Btw what I really wish is Facepunch to close the Russian servers with fake pop. This is not normal. Because Facepunch ToS only prohibit the usage of plugins/mods/extensions or whatever to modify pop, SHIT Russians somehow avoid this and run 200 connections from steam clients to their server and the fake pop is from real players (AFK accounts) then. If a new player without any knowledge about Rust and censorship update look at 2 servers  have more chance as a new player to think the server with censorship names ON is legit than the Russian crap where censorship is OFF but every 5 players have the exact same scripted [CLAN] NAME or whatever else... This way they bypass the ban and stay on top every time when my game fetch for servers and you can find this way real servers to play on without using again batttlemetrics.

pookins

Absolutely no logic in that answer at all !,
You want FP to ban customers from using their software that encourages more people playing their game, What method is FP going to use to determine which servers are home based and which ones are Host based and what reason are they going to use that is covered in their terms of use to restrict home servers ? , What criteria are YOU using to postulate the theory that they are 90% children ? , Did you have to prove your age when starting your server or renting one from a server host ? ,
 If i join a well run server where there is no admin abuse and it has all the ingredients that i like to have a good playing experience i dont ask the admin "how old are you ?" ,  htf would you know and wtf would you care ?

Kids run Rust servers without paying 1 cent from a home computer and I know that very well. That's why on the Rust Master List you have 2000 servers to choose where to play and it kills the population on real paid servers.

FP should prohibit servers from a home connection from appearing on the Rust Master List or should introduce a "HOME CONNECTION" category so players to know that the Rust server is in on a shitty home connection.

Enough for Smart ;)

jure12

Kids run Rust servers without paying 1 cent from a home computer and I know that very well. That's why on the Rust Master List you have 2000 servers to choose where to play and it kills the population on real paid servers.

FP should prohibit servers from a home connection from appearing on the Rust Master List or should introduce a "HOME CONNECTION" category so players to know that the Rust server is in on a shitty home connection.

Enough for Smart ;)

How can you even tell what a home connection is, though? I know a lot of businesses that run servers on premises with "home connections", they just have a static IP and have sufficient bandwidth for their service. Running a Rust server isn't exactly a bandwidth heavy process.

jure12

Kids run Rust servers without paying 1 cent from a home computer and I know that very well. That's why on the Rust Master List you have 2000 servers to choose where to play and it kills the population on real paid servers.

FP should prohibit servers from a home connection from appearing on the Rust Master List or should introduce a "HOME CONNECTION" category so players to know that the Rust server is in on a shitty home connection.

Enough for Smart ;)

tomhud

your talking daft now 

I dispute the "now" statement  :)

ErikaSupreme

How can you even tell what a home connection is, though? I know a lot of businesses that run servers on premises with "home connections", they just have a static IP and have sufficient bandwidth for their service. Running a Rust server isn't exactly a bandwidth heavy process.

Simply via IP address you can see which connection it is, there are scripts to detect this.

tomhud

your talking daft now 

I'm not talking daft ... I guess you're one of them so you don't want that to happen :)
Anyone who disagrees with this I assume you are kids who own a Rust server on your home computer with a shitty home connection.

That's why there are 2000 Rust servers to choose from on the Rust Master List unfortunately.

I think it's because people are back in school honestly, server pop has been down this month more than ever.