14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Facepunch Studios, best known for working on Rust, says that it has no plans to abandon the title or to slow down the development process following the announcement of a new title called Riftlight, because it has both the resources and the passion to create both titles at the same time.
The response, which comes in an official blog post, is a reaction to the way the community has used the reveal of the new project as an occasion to criticize the studio and accuse them of abandoning Rust without delivering a full launch for it.
At the moment, the post-apocalypse survival title is housed by the Early Access section of Steam, and it’s unclear when version 1.0 might be launched.
Facepunch also wants to assure everyone that it has other three prototypes in the early stages of development, although none of them is at the moment ready to be shown to gamers.
Garry Newman, one of the leaders of the company, tells the Rust community that “Are we doing it wrong? Should every person in the company be working on the same thing? Should HBO make one TV show at a time? Should Warner Brothers make one movie at a time?”
He explains that at the moment the company is focusing on making sure that talented developers get to work on the ideas that they are interested in, and also makes clear that Riftlight is internally founded and there are no plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign for it.
The resources currently allocated to Rust will not be redirected, and fans of the title will continue to get regular updates, linked to both graphics and gameplay.
The company leader also makes it clear that his company will use the money it has earned by selling its biggest hit to fund future projects, even if the core fan base might not be interested in playing them as soon as they are revealed.
Newman adds, “I am guessing that a lot of game developers bigger and smaller than us have multiple prototypes in the works, but they aren't showing them to you. The only thing that makes our situation remarkable is that we're willing to talk about our process and show our experiments.”
Riftlight is a space-based action title with bright lights and fast gameplay that seems entirely different from the bleak and dark experience that Rust offers.