Rust has seen an immense popularity jump in the later months of 2020 and early 2021 thanks to large Twitch streamers bringing it back into the spotlight with over one million concurrent viewers in January of 2021. This means there have been a lot of new players getting into the game before quickly figuring out how brutal it is during the first couple of days when trying to find tools and weapons. The developers, Facepunch Studios, have decided to introduce a new ‘softcore’ gamemode that would tone down some of the difficulty players face.

This month we launch the Softcore Gamemode to soften the Rust experience for those that want it, a new automated drone delivery service for your vending needs, work on the Hapis revamp as well as the usual fixes and improvements.https://t.co/1jbTctprPZ

— Rust (@playrust) February 4, 2021

In a recent blog post, Facepunch Studios detailed the changes that this new gamemode would bring. Some of those aforementioned changes include when players are killed they will only lose half of their inventory and can pick up the other half where they died or at a reclaim terminal which can be located at Bandit Town or the Outpost. They will have two hours to do so. In addition, players can respawn at either the Bandit Town or Outpost safe zones whenever, unless they are flagged as hostile. These places will also have vending machines for players to place orders and have them be delivered by drones; a change which will hopefully make trading safer. Players are also only able to view the contents of a wounded player. And finally, the maximum team size is limited to four.

Facepunch Studio is hoping this new gamemode will allow for a more casual playing of Rust and have announced that they will continue to improve it in the coming months. Right now, they plan to have ten servers run the new Softcore game mode.

Rust is currently available on Steam for $39.99 and will be coming to consoles soon. The new Softcore mode will be appearing later this month.