Rust faces gender controversy

Following a new update, Rust now randomly assigns gender and physical characteristics based on your Steam ID.

Players have cited concerns due not only to the fact that they can now no longer choose which gender they play as, but are now randomly assigned race, facial features, and even how well endowed their character is.

Developer Craig Pearson addressed the issue on the game’s official blog:

We understand this is a sore subject for a lot of people. We understand that you may now be a gender that you don’t identify with in real-life. We understand this causes you distress and makes you not want to play the game anymore.

Technically nothing has changed, since half the population was already living with those feelings. The only difference is that whether you feel like this is now decided by your SteamID instead of your real life gender.

This is really just the first pass of an ongoing rework of the player model. I’ll continue to add variations over the comings weeks which means you’re probably not stuck with your new face forever.

We’ve got a decent synced workflow between the assets I make in Zbrush and the assets you’ll see in-game now, so it opens up a lot of scope to easily add or change features without a great deal of technical faffing in-between.

This update is the first time female character models have featured in the game. You can purchase Rust on Steam here.