In many ways,
Rust has always been something of a digital social experiment: What happens when people are thrown together in a primitive, isolated environment, with no rules beyond "survive?" (Answer: It's Lord of the Flies, every single time.) Back in March, the experiment got a little deeper (and the uproar, a little louder) when the game was
updated to arbitrarily assign unchangeable faces and skin tones to players, and now an even more sensitive bit of anatomy has been adjusted in a manner that will likely please some players more than others.
The hot tip came from
Reddit, of course, (via
PCGamesN), in the form of a
video showing the effects of different Steam IDs on penis size. The actual workings of the system remain a closely-guarded mystery, but Rust creator Garry Newman confirmed that the report is accurate. "Like tallness, face, head size, jaw definition, race, and limb size, penises are also randomized," he said. And, like those other features, it's tied to your Steam ID and cannot be changed; if you come up short, so to speak, you're just going to have to deal with it. Maybe buy a big pickup truck or something.
Despite the many variations in "features," everyone in Rust shares one common attribute: They're all dudes. That may change in the not-too-distant future, however, as Facepunch revealed in its latest
blog post that it has begun the process of adding a female model to the game. But don't get too wound up over the prospect of being trapped on an island filled with naked swimsuit models.
"We really don’t want to make the female model unrealistic in the sense of her being aesthetically idealized," Tom—presumably Facepunch artist Thomas Butters—wrote. "In the same way that our male models aren’t perfect specimens of the male body, neither should the female be. No huge boobs nor four-inch waists here."
That's as it should be, and as it has to be, really. Unlike the ESRB, I don't have a problem with nudity in videogames, but a game filled with male schlubs and female supermodels would look pretty weird. Butters added that in-game testing of the female model could begin as soon as next week.
