Facepunch COO Alistair McFarlane leaves after 11 years on Rust

Alistair McFarlane, chief operating officer and director of Facepunch Studios, has left the company. In a message posted to X, McFarlane said July 30 was his last day at the studio behind Rust, ending a run of nearly eleven years that began with a quality assurance role.

McFarlane rose through the studio to become executive producer on Rust, and over time became one of Facepunch’s most visible public representatives. PC Gamer reports he was a familiar presence on Reddit and social media, where a willingness to talk directly to players made him widely recognised within the game’s community.

In the same message, McFarlane called leaving one of the hardest decisions he had made, and said he was proud of what the studio had built. He credited the Rust development team with shipping monthly updates without fail for more than a decade, and said the game is now reaching some of the highest player numbers in its 13-year history across multiple platforms.

A high-visibility tenure

Part of McFarlane’s public profile came from a run of episodes that drew attention well beyond the Rust player base. In January he offered to buy the New World MMO from Amazon for $25 million, in a bid that did not read as entirely a joke. Three months later he appeared to suggest that a sequel to Rust was in development, a claim Facepunch boss Garry Newman eventually shot down.

McFarlane said he has nothing specific planned for what comes next, framing the exit as a chance to recover time the job had taken from him. "The years I dedicated to Rust inevitably took time away from other parts of my life," he wrote. "Now it’s time to give some of that time back into the areas I sacrificed."

The thread announcing the departure drew hundreds of replies on the Rust subreddit and on X. McFarlane described the response as overwhelming and said he intends to answer everyone who wrote to him.