Garry Newman: ‘The more things we work on the better’

Rust developer Facepunch Studios met with criticism recently when it unveiled its newest project Rift-Light.

Gamers posted multiple comments under the dev’s blog post announcing the new game, complaining that Early Access title Rust remains unfinished and that Facepunch should concentrate on that project first.

Studio founder Garry Newman posted a response that rather nicely sums up the aggrieved users’ fallacy.

"Are we crazy? Are we doing it wrong?" he wrote. "Should every person in the company be working on the same thing? Should HBO make one TV show at a time? Should Warner Brothers make one movie at a time?"

He suggested most of the complaints came from users who had only read the headline and looked at the pictures, rather than reading the full post, adding: "they are probably going to be even angrier to find out that we have three other prototypes being worked on by Facepunch staff".

"And guess what?" he continued. "We haven’t finished Rust, and we haven’t finished Rift-Light, and we haven’t finished those three other prototypes… and we want to hire more programmers to start even more prototypes.

"We are spending money Rust and Garry’s Mod make to [fund new projects]. Arguing that we should be re-investing that money back into only those games is like telling apple they can’t spend the money they made from iPhone and Macs to fund the development of the iPad. Keep in mind that we spent money Garry’s Mod made to develop Rust – and that turned out pretty good, right? Or should Helk and Pat have been working on Garry’s Mod all that time?

"I think a good company develops continually, and the more things we’re working on the better. I think this strategy is working out for us so far."