Rust vs Starbound
Reviews on Steam
Rust
9.5× more reviews
Critical reception
Starbound
3.2pp gap
Cheaper at launch
Starbound
$25.00 cheaper
Estimated sales (median)
Rust
9.5× more units (white-box estimate)
More recent
Rust
2 years apart
Rust
2018 · Action
Facepunch Studios · Facepunch Studios
- Reviews
- 1,140,437
- Positive
- 87%
- Launch price
- $39.99
- Engine
- n/a
- Sales (median)
- 102.6M
- Net rev
- $2344.5M
Starbound
2016 · Action
- Reviews
- 120,582
- Positive
- 90%
- Launch price
- $14.99
- Engine
- n/a
- Sales (median)
- 10.9M
- Net rev
- $92.9M
Tag overlap
60% shared , 12 shared tags, 8 only on Rust, 8 only on Starbound.
Only Rust
PvPFirst-PersonNudityFPSShooterPost-apocalypticEarly AccessSimulation
Shared
SurvivalCraftingMultiplayerOpen WorldOpen World Survival CraftBuildingSandboxAdventureActionCo-opOnline Co-OpIndie
Only Starbound
SpacePixel GraphicsExplorationRelaxing2DRPGAtmosphericSci-fi
Sales estimates
Both estimates use the same vv1.0 multi-factor Boxleiter method. Click "How is this calculated?" on either to see the per-factor breakdown.
Sales estimate
vv1.061.6M to 143.7M
units (median: 102.6M)
≈ $1406.7M to $3282.3M net revenue (Steam cut + refunds + regional discount applied)
Sales estimate
vv1.06.5M to 15.2M
units (median: 10.9M)
≈ $55.8M to $130.1M net revenue (Steam cut + refunds + regional discount applied)
How comparison pages work
Verdicts are objective, they call out which game scores higher on a single measurable axis (reviews, price, sales estimate, recency). They don't claim "better." Tag overlap is computed from the public Steam tag list. Sales estimates use a multi-factor Boxleiter method whose formula is shown in full on each game's page.
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