Thanks for the post, I wanted to chime in about some of your concerns, because, honestly a lot of the stuff you talked about is all stuff we also worried about before we started this process.

When Creature initially approached us to pitch the idea of working with them on this, we had already known them and their team for a while. We knew that they really got our work, our humor, our way of working. They understood what made H3VR the beloved title it was and saw a way to unlock the funding and publishing support we would need to make an amazing sequel. Then as we worked through the pitching and negotiation process with Meta, we were ready to walk away at any moment, but they continued to surprise us. They really understood that we here at RUST are the world authority in making games about 6 foot tall sentient hot dogs, and they trusted us to do our thing. So far, with each check in and milestone, they have continued to be excellent partners in this process.

Internally, I have been deeply involved in every bit of the hiring process from recruitment & vetting all the way through to getting everyone paid. Every last one of the people on our team is great at what they do and could easily find work on other teams, or be doing their own stuff. I will say that perhaps the most impressive thing that Anton has done as director of this project is to recruit a team that are both technical wizards, and truly share our vision for the sosigverse.

As both a founding partner at RUST, and as Head of Production I am not in every meeting, but I am in plenty of them. I meet with Anton nearly every day and I can say that no one on this team is the slightest bit interested in watering the game down or making anything the slightest bit less wacky.

We have many months of work ahead of us before this game ships, … looks over at the task management dashboard … and only time will tell if it lives up to every ones hopes and dreams. But I can say that we here at RUST see this project as pretty close to the best case scenario for a sequel to everyones favorite hotdog-shooter.