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Rust faces tremendous player data loss in server building fire

Many Rust players in the EU have likely lost of all of their progress as a fire ripped through a data center and destroyed 25 servers for the game.

TJ Denzer

March 10, 2021 5:58 AM

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Rust and developer Facepunch Studios have experienced a catastrophic loss that extends to European players this week. A data center containing numerous servers for the game, as well as player save data, recently caught fire and was unable to be contained. The damage was irreparable and 25 Rust EU servers were caught up in the blaze.

The issue took place at an OVH Cloud data center building late on March 9, as reported by OVH CEO Octave Klaba (thanks Eurogamer). Reportedly, firefighters were called to the scene, but could not control the fire as it overtook the building. Fortunately, all staff were safely evacuated from the building and no lives were lost in the incident. However, the building was unable to be saved and all servers inside were destroyed. As the incident took place, Rust developer Facepunch Studios reported being affected. While initial announcements remained a touch hazy about exactly what was lost, it wasn’t long after that Facepunch concluded the true extent of the damage, revealing that 25 EU game servers had been lost along with the player data they contained.

Update:
We've confirmed a total loss of the affected EU servers during the OVH data centre fire. We're now exploring replacing the affected servers.

Data will be unable to be restored.

— Rust (@playrust) March 10, 2021

It’s a pretty severe loss to say the least and leaves a lot of players with a lot of work in the game back at square one. Being the survival game that it is, building oneself up in Rust can take a long amount of time. The game hasn’t been without fundamental issues over the years, but generally speaking, it still has an enormous player base across various platforms of faithful players who have poured numerous hours into it. Unfortunately, it seems a large chunk of those players have no choice but to start over.

The silver lining here is that no lives were lost in the incident. Facepunch Studios will be looking into replacements for the affected studios immediately. If there are any updates in information on this story, you’ll find them here at Shacknews.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.