According to a tweet from Newman, sales increased by 74 percent when the update was released and overall player count nearly doubled for a period, "which is the opposite of what many said would happen," he tweeted. Typically when updates roll out, like last year's that introduced randomly assigned skin color and faces, there'd be a slow but steady increase over months, rather than a sudden uptick. Newman tells Kotaku that outside of Steam sales, he's never witnessed these types of numbers before.

Facepunch is aware that some players don't enjoy the idea of playing Rust as a woman, creator Garry Newman says. He shared one recent player complaint on Twitter that reads, in part, "I got a dirty woman ... and everytime [sic] I see her I wanna threw [sic] up." "We understand this causes you distress and makes you not want to play the game anymore," Newman says. "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." Facepunch is continually updating Rust and this isn't the end of the character model changes.