Some games take well to player celebrity. In others, it’s best to keep a low profile. Rust streamers in the past have found that viewers are able to work out which server they’re playing on – and either DDOS it or hunt them down on camera.
Facepunch Studios’ new streamer mode is designed to make that eventuality less likely. It does two things: hide server names so that viewers won’t see your location if you accidentally press escape, and change the names of the players around you.
Random names mean that griefers won’t be able to triangulate your position quite so easily. The titles are generated based on steamid and won’t change – the idea being you’ll learn to recognise friends by their aliases.
“This probably isn’t going to solve all the problems, and I’m sure there’s room for improvement,” wrote Garry Newman on Thursday. “But hopefully it will help out the guys who have been asking for this. Or at a minimum it will make them realise it’s a big waste of time and will shut up asking for it.”
Our Joe wrote about the making of Garry’s Mod – which doubles as an origin story for Rust. When did you last have a poke about in Garry’s griefer’s haven?