Yesterday, someone posted a picture of a barebones Steam page to r/playrust, captioned, "RUST 2 IS REAL?!"
Any other day, players would have chalked this up to the equivalent of a Silkpost, but interestingly, OP's account was made just minutes before posting, and right after it went live, Facepunch COO Alistair McFarlane responded, "You saw nothing." It smelled like a set-up - an official tease under the guise of a leak. It wasn't.
As the community started burning the forums down at the mere sight of a F2P sequel, studio founder Garry Newman told PC Gamer, "Nope. We're not making Rust 2." It doesn't get more clear than that.
In hindsight, it should've been obvious. Facepunch isn't known for elaborate ARGs, and SteamDB staff flagged the page as "suspicious," and warned that it may be "impersonating another product." McFarlane was also clearly messing with the community. "I visit the subreddit a lot, and I sometimes see sh*t posts and comments that cause confusion," he explained. "Now you're all questioning yourselves, is this real? Maybe?"
A Half-Life 3 reveal is looking more and more likely.
That's not to mention McFarlane's history of tongue-in-cheek social media posts, as...
