Rust player count: 133,483 on Steam on Oct. 23, as the Halloween event follows the Livestock update

Rust rode its October update and moved straight into Halloween. Here’s how many people play Facepunch’s survival game, what the Livestock update did for it and when the next update lands.

How many people play Rust?

Rust peaked at 133,483 concurrent players on Steam on Oct. 23, 2026, according to Valve’s most played chart, which ranked it No. 28, down from No. 27 a week earlier. At 4:49 a.m. ET on Oct. 24, 82,675 people were playing it on Steam.

Rust on Steam covers Windows and macOS. Rust Console Edition on PlayStation and Xbox is a separate game with its own servers, so it sits outside these numbers.

January is Rust’s peak month: January 2025 set the record at more than 259,000, and January 2026 reached 246,562. September 2026 was the quietest month since September 2024, with a peak of 148,276, and the last 30 days averaged 82,150 players at any moment, about 16% below October 2025’s 97,411.

How the Livestock update lifted October. Facepunch released the Livestock update on Oct. 1, 2026, the first Thursday of the month, as it has with every monthly update since February. The headline additions:

• Cows and sheep that give dung, milk and wool and can be captured, bred for better genes and sold to a new vendor at the Stables.
• Milk, which can be refrigerated and skimmed into Cream, a stronger consumable used to boost tea effects.
• A Biofuel Generator that turns raw or spoiled meat into low grade fuel, plus animal gates and fences.
• Frogs, rabbits, squirrels, sea turtles, crabs and jellyfish around the island, a repairable Air Wolf helipad at Bandit Camp, four-stage stackable sandbags and new Powergrid loot rooms at monuments.

The daily Steam peak jumped from 85,376 on Sept. 30 to 150,305 on Oct. 1 and 162,249 on Saturday, Oct. 3, October’s best day. It eased to 134,300 the next Saturday and 132,797 on Oct. 17.

The weekly rhythm and the Halloween event. Rust’s crowd follows a weekly cycle. In October, the daily Steam peak bottomed out each Wednesday, climbed on Thursday and topped out on Friday or Saturday:

The Halloween event went live on Oct. 22 and runs until Nov. 5. Roughly every two in-game days, a three-minute Candy Hunt rewards the top three collectors with loot bags. Players can stitch scarecrow and mummy parts into a pet monster on a Frankenstein’s table, and rift portals lead into a Halloween dungeon. A Twitch Rivals Base Invaders show ran at 2 p.m. ET on Oct. 23, with drops until Nov. 1. On Friday, Oct. 23, the daily Steam peak reached 133,164, above the previous Friday’s 130,481, and Valve’s chart logged 133,483.

Valve ranks the chart by its own measure of play, so a game with a higher peak can sit lower, as Rust does behind Iron Gate’s Viking game, covered on our Valheim player count page. Rust still drew the biggest peak in this table, ahead of Keen Games' title on our Enshrouded 1.0 page and Pocketpair’s game on our Palworld 1.0 patch notes page. Team Jade’s shooter, four spots lower with 122,206, is covered on our Delta Force player count page.

We expect the November update on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026, the day the Halloween event ends. Facepunch has shipped every monthly update since February on the first Thursday of the month, from the Naval Update on Feb. 5 to Livestock on Oct. 1, and each one arrives with the monthly wipe.

This page is updated as soon as Valve’s chart posts Rust’s Saturday peak or Facepunch posts the November update.