Your Gender in Rust is Assigned to You and Can't Be Changed

Open-world survival game Rust received a new update that includes female player models, and with it, users have been assigned a model based on their SteamID. If they want to change the way they look or switch their gender, they're out of luck: the character model is permanently tied to their account.

Developer Facepunch Studios detailed the new update on its blog. Some people may be unhappy with the fact that they can't play as a gender they identify with, but the studio said that "[t]echnically nothing has changed, since half the population was already living with those feelings."

Eurogamer spoke to Garry Newman, one of the developers on Rust, who explained why the change was made. Newman said they "didn't want to go down [the] route" of having the character customization be "80 percent of the game."

"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. And this would be consistent and follow them around permanently," Newman added.

The developer said that, originally, players had no choice in the way their character looked, so they're not taking anything away.

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

"I don't believe that playing as a different gender/race detracts from anyone's enjoyment of the game."

It's worth noting that your character model and gender have no impact on your stats in the game. However, if character customization was available, some players could change the way they look to more easily blend in with the environment, especially at night.

Rust is currently available on Steam through its Early Access program.

Last year, Rust started to randomly assign skin color and facial features to players, which was followed by some backlash.