Rust

Rust is Facepunch StudiosPublisherFacepunch StudiosFacepunch Studios is the UK developer of Rust and Garry's Mod, founded by Garry Newman. Rust uses Easy Anti-Cheat (kernel-mode) and Facepunch runs one of the more aggressive anti-cheat cultures in PC gaming, including a 2026 move toward requiring TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot.1 game in this family →' multiplayer survival game: players spawn with nothing on a persistent server, gather resources, build bases, and fight over them, with regular server wipes resetting progress. It entered Steam Early Access in December 2013 and reached its 1.0 release in February 2018, built on the UnityEngineUnityUnity Technologies' engine powers a wide range of PC titles, from indie projects to large multiplayer games. In the competitive-shooter space, Escape from Tarkov is the notable Unity-based title.8 games in this family → engine. A separate console edition, developed with Double Eleven, launched on PlayStation and Xbox in 2021. Facepunch is a UK studio founded by Garry Newman, the creator of Garry's Mod.

Rust requires Easy Anti-Cheat, including a kernel driver on Windows, to play on official servers. If your hardware is from roughly before 2016, check that it supports TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot, since Facepunch is moving toward requiring them. The legitimate game process is RustClient.exe inside the Steam directory. The regular 'wipes' are a normal game mechanic resetting the map, not a ban.

Rust runs Easy Anti-Cheat. On Windows, EACAnti-cheatEasy Anti-Cheat (EAC)Easy Anti-Cheat is one of the most widely deployed kernel anti-cheats in PC gaming. Founded by Finnish company Kamu in 2006, acquired by Epic Games in 2018, and bundled with Epic Online Services. The kernel driver loads while a protected game is running. User-mode daemons EasyAntiCheat.exe and EasyAntiCheat_EOS.exe are catalogued in the Field Guide's processes section.18 games in this family → uses both a kernel-mode driver and a user-mode process that load with the game; the client will not connect to official servers without it. The game process is RustClient.exe (Facepunch documents launching it directly only as a way to start with EAC disabled, which blocks official play); the anti-cheat is EasyAntiCheat.exe plus its kernel driver. Facepunch has been escalating its trust ask: as of 2026 it began requiring TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot on select servers, with the stated intent to make it mandatory for all players, on the rationale that a verified boot chain makes it far harder for cheats to load unsigned drivers before the anti-cheat starts.

Facepunch has one of the more aggressive anti-cheat cultures in PC gaming, and it is public about it. Its first system, CheatPunch, banned over 4,600 players in roughly a week in early 2014; the studio later moved to Easy Anti-Cheat. Bans are permanent and frequently delivered as delayed waves after detection updates. Facepunch has said it will 'never be finished fighting' cheaters, and has been openly dismissive of platforms it views as cheat vectors. The driver of its 2026 hardware-attestation push is DMA (direct memory access) hardware cheats, which read game memory from a second device and are hard for software anti-cheat to see.