A fire in a Strasbourg data centre has destroyed 25 servers that held player data for online survival game Rust.
Mercifully, there were no real-world casualties but as reported by Eurogamer, and confirmed by developers Facepunch, a massive chunk of EU player data has been permanently lost.
Other non-Rust games and services have also been affected. Open source chess server Lichess was also affected though the site is now back up. OVHcloud, the company whose servers were destroyed in the blaze, also hosted Minecraft servers so fans of the blocky build-em-up could potentially find their worlds destroyed.
Update:
We've confirmed a total loss of the affected EU servers during the OVH data centre fire. We're now exploring replacing the affected servers.Data will be unable to be restored.
— Rust (@playrust) March 10, 2021
Because Rust’s player data is wiped each month anyway, it’s not a case of months and months of progress being erased. Still, why didn’t Facepunch have a secondary backup for Rust? One of the unwritten rules of data storage is to assume the absolute worst; having a backup at another site is a way of recovering if the worst does happen.
It could be that, with the data getting regularly wiped, the company didn’t think it was worth it. And, while Rust has a large number of players, the company doesn’t charge a subscription fee, just the cost of buying the game itself, so the money would need to come from somewhere.
It’s not the end of Rust’s post-apocalyptic world, but it’s quite a hiccup for the survival game, which is due for a console release this spring.
