'Rust' New Character Updates: Character Gender Assigned; Female Characters Unveiled

Developer Facepunch Studios has released a new update for the open-world survival game "Rust." The new update introduced female player models, and users are now assigned a model based on their Steam ID.

According to a blog post from the PlayRust.com, users are now unable to change their appearance looks or switch their gender. Their Steam ID now permanently dictates their character model.

Not Much Has Changed

Garry Newman, one of the developers of "Rust," gave the reason why they implemented the changes. According to him, they didn't want to pursue customization of characters to take up 80 percent of the game, as reported by Eurogamer.

"We were also talking about how we hate how players are recognizable by their names floating over their heads. How, in an ideal world, players would be recognizable by what they look like," Newman said in an interview with Eurogramer. "And this would be consistent and follow them around permanently."

Newman knows that some users may not be pleased that they can't play as a gender they identify with, but the developer said that the game hasn't changed, in a sense. Garry Newman pointed out that approximately 50 percent of the population have already adjusted to having those sentiments, per the news outet.

Gender and Race Play A Role

The studio believes that playing as a different gender or race wouldn't keep users from enjoying "Rust." Your character's model and gender also don't affect your stats in the game. However, character customization allows players to change their appearances to easily blend in an environment, especially during night time.

"You are who you are. Before we added different races and genders, you played as a bald white guy -- you never had a choice," explained Newman via Eurogamer. "So we're not taking a choice away from the player, we're just adding more variety to the player models," 

Social Experiment

Newman told Polygon in June that "Rust" was used as a social experiment, though he didn't intend the game to display race-based discrimination. Newman, however, expressed his excitement over the future impact of female character models in the game.

"I'm more interested in seeing what happens when we add the female model," Newman told Polygon. "Whether women will get attacked more because they're perceived as weak, or whether they'll get attacked less because they're perceived as vulnerable. That stuff is interesting to me."

Last year, the developer received backlash after randomly assigning skin color and facial features to players' characters. "Rust" is available on Steam via its Early Access program, GameSpot wrote. The game runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and OS X.