Rust’s Big Year And An Even Bigger Update
Rust has already had a packed 2025. Facepunch has been pushing the survival sandbox in new directions with several major updates. We have seen a medieval themed primitive mode that stripped Rust back to swords, shields and low tech gear, and a dense new jungle biome that was so thick the developers had to rethink how resources spawn because players simply could not find them.
On top of that, the team has spent much of the year experimenting with Rust’s core progression systems and meta. They have been trying to stop players from turtling in their bases all day and instead encourage more exploration and conflict. That has meant bold changes and even full blueprint wipes to bring back a sense of discovery for veterans.
All of this has been the warm up for what was supposed to be Rust’s biggest patch of 2025: the naval update. This update is aimed at expanding Rust’s survival battles from land to sea, with player built ships and full on ocean warfare using cannons and seaborne skirmishes.
However, the long awaited life at sea is going to take a bit longer to arrive.
Why The Naval Update Is Delayed
Facepunch’s Chief Operating Officer Alistair McFarlane explained the situation in a blog post titled “Shipwrecked”. Rust has a reputation for consistent updates. For almost twelve years the studio has delivered weekly or, more recently, guaranteed monthly updates with meaningful changes. That schedule has become part of the game’s identity. Players are used to showing up every month for fresh content.
This time, though, the team has had to break that streak. McFarlane admits they took on too much with the naval update. It is described as a massive patch with many new systems that also touch and change older parts of the game. The closer the team got to the planned release date, the less confident they felt about the overall stability and quality.
They did briefly consider the classic live service approach of shipping the update anyway and patching it rapidly afterward. But one of the big concerns was server health. A huge, complex update that is not fully ready can tank performance, introduce serious bugs and even cause large drops in player counts if it destabilizes the experience.
With the holiday season coming up and server populations usually peaking, Facepunch did not want to risk “crippling servers” or spending the entire break firefighting bugs. As McFarlane put it, Rust is currently in a good state even without the naval patch, and the team cannot justify risking stability just to hit a calendar date.
In other words, this is a classic quality over speed decision. McFarlane says they already feel bad about missing a window they have never missed before, but they would feel worse about shipping something half baked that wrecks performance for everyone over the holidays.
The new release target for the naval update is now February 5, 2026. That gives the developers extra time to tune performance, iron out bugs, and make sure all the new ship systems and ocean combat actually feel good in real play rather than just in theory.
What Players Get In The Meantime
A delay like this can be frustrating, especially when players have spent months hyped for a big feature like ship building and naval battles. Facepunch is not leaving the community completely empty handed though.
McFarlane says that some of the content and changes that were originally meant to ship alongside the naval patch will be pulled forward into a Christmas update coming on December 18. While details are still light, you can expect this to act as a seasonal gift to the community and a way to keep the game feeling active while the larger systems continue to bake.
After that, the plan is to follow up with a smaller update in January. This one will focus on lighter balance or quality of life changes and will also include a broader overview of Facepunch’s roadmap for Rust through 2026. That means players should get a clearer picture of how naval content fits into the future of the game and what other big shifts the devs are planning for the next year.
Looking back at 2025, it is clear that Rust is in one of its more experimental eras. Primitive mode, the jungle biome, meta overhauls and aggressive blueprint changes all show a studio that is willing to disrupt its own formula to keep the game fresh. The naval update fits right into that mindset. Adding full scale ocean combat, player created ships and new ways to raid or defend at sea has the potential to reshape how groups control territory and how late game PvP works.
From a performance and technical angle, it also explains why the patch is so sensitive. Ships, physics, water behavior, new weapons and combat interactions all have to play nicely with Rust’s existing systems and large player counts. A single bad interaction in a high population server can cascade into crashes or awful lag, so it makes sense that Facepunch is being extra cautious.
For now, Rust players can treat the upcoming Christmas and January updates as a bridge to the new era of seafaring survival in early 2026. If the delay pays off, the naval update should land in a more stable and enjoyable state, letting the community focus on learning the new systems and blowing each other out of the water rather than wrestling with bugs.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/rusts-hotly-anticipated-naval-update-is-delayed-into-2026-we-took-on-too-much/
