Rust director Alistair McFarlane has left Facepunch Studios

Alistair McFarlane, who directed Rust at Facepunch Studios, has left the company. He confirmed the departure himself in a public post, saying that July 30 was his final day at the studio, after roughly eleven years working on the survival game and around thirteen years since he first played it.

McFarlane published the announcement himself on July 30, writing that he had not planned to share it so soon but that players had already noticed. He said he discovered Rust nearly thirteen years ago and was given the opportunity to work on it around two years after that, putting his tenure on the game at close to eleven years.

His announcement gave no indication of any dispute behind the exit. McFarlane is a well-known figure in the Rust community, in part for a history of public stunts that its playerbase has treated as part of the game’s culture, and reaction to the news has centred on his absence from that role rather than on the circumstances.

The New World hints go quiet

The departure also appears to close off a separate thread. McFarlane had previously teased that he was in talks to buy New World from Amazon, and MassivelyOP reports that New World players were genuinely hopeful about those hints. They were followed by months of silence, and his exit from Facepunch makes the prospect substantially less likely.

Whether those talks ever existed in a formal sense, stalled, or amounted to a running joke has not been established publicly, and neither McFarlane nor Amazon has said. Facepunch has not announced who will take over direction of Rust, and McFarlane has not said what he is doing next.