Title: Rustoria (Official) Lead Staff is banning players for criticizing their VIP-priority system and lying about player activity
Just had a surreal experience with Luke (Lead/Director level staff at Rustoria). I’m sharing this because players should know how an "Official" server group handles feedback and transparency.
The Situation:
During today's wipe, the queue for non-VIPs was completely frozen. I was 7th in queue and didn't move for 1.5 hours, while VIPs were joining instantly. When I raised this in Discord, the response from Luke was:
- Dismissiveness: He told players they "can't ask for more when they won't even pay $10 a month."
- A blatant lie: He claimed I hadn't connected to their servers in 4 years to discredit me. I literally played on the previous wipe.
The "Wrongspeak" Ban:
I made a post to discuss this transparency issue. Within minutes of getting through the queue and joining the server, I was banned.
When I asked for a reason, Luke straight up admitted it was because of social media criticism:
>"You are going well out of your way to try and damage our servers with posts on Reddit, why would we allow you to continue to play here?"
The Irony:
About a minute after I was banned for "damaging the server" by asking for more slots, they increased the server slots. They knew the feedback was valid, but they chose to silence the messenger instead of acknowledging the issue.
The Problem:
Rustoria is an Official Rust Partner. Being an official server should come with a standard of professionalism. Instead, we have:
- Staff lying to players to win arguments.
- Retaliatory bans for sharing factual experiences on Reddit.
- An "Entitled" attitude towards anyone who doesn't pay the $10 VIP tax.
I even tried to reach out for a middle ground (just so I could play), but was met with: "I've made my decision... I won't be replying further."
If criticism of technical issues is considered "damaging the server" and results in a permanent ban, is this really the "Official" experience Facepunch intended for the community?
TL;DR: Got stuck in a frozen queue, pointed it out, got lied to by lead staff, posted on Reddit, got banned for "damaging the server," and then they fixed the slot issue anyway.
