Last reviewed October 2026 · How we research · Sellers and scores on the Rust page.
What Facepunch Says
Facepunch’s Terms of Service, last updated July 15, 2025, deal with Rust items in section 7, on Virtual Goods. It says they have no cash value and “generally cannot be ‘bought’, ‘sold’, gifted, transferred, traded or redeemed in any way”, except where Facepunch and the platform have explicitly authorised it — the example the Terms give is the Steam marketplace. What a player holds is a limited, revocable, non-transferable licence, and Facepunch remains the legal owner of the goods at all times.
The rest of the Terms tighten that further. Section 3 limits the services to personal enjoyment, not commercial purposes, and section 7.4 lets Facepunch revoke, without notice or compensation, any virtual goods obtained by way of a bug, hack, breach or exploitation. Breaking the rules is a material breach, which section 9 says can mean suspension or cancellation of access, including access to the virtual goods themselves. Steam adds a second layer: Valve’s Subscriber Agreement says your account is strictly personal, may not be sold or transferred, and that Valve does not recognise transfers of subscriptions made outside Steam.
Two Very Different Deliveries
Rust has no mail system and no cross-server market, so what you buy splits into two different things. Skins live in your Steam inventory and move by Steam trade offer or through the Community Market. Resources and gear — scrap, sulfur, components, weapons — exist only inside the one server they were gathered on, so a seller has to join your server and hand them over in person, or stash them somewhere you can reach. On that server, ordinary player trading runs through vending machines and the Outpost marketplace terminals, which is the world a delivery has to happen in.
Both routes carry built-in friction. Valve holds items in a trade for up to 15 days unless the account losing them has had the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator enabled for at least 7 days with trade confirmations turned on, so a skin deal with a stranger can sit in limbo for a fortnight. And anything delivered in game is on a clock: forced wipes land on the first Thursday of every month and clear all player buildings and items off the map, and many community servers wipe weekly. A resource order bought late in a cycle can be deleted by the calendar within days.
What Can Go Wrong
- Wiped away. Resources live and die on one server: forced wipes clear every building and item on the first Thursday of the month, weekly community servers wipe more often, and a raid can take what you bought before either happens.
- Revoked goods. Facepunch can revoke virtual goods obtained through a bug, hack, breach or exploitation without notice or compensation, and supply farmed or duped by a seller sits squarely in that category once it reaches your inventory.
- Account responsibility. Facepunch support says account holders are responsible for activity on their account even if it was stolen or compromised, and EAC bans are permanent unless overturned; support also notes a game ban can affect your ability to transfer Rust items. Sharing your account with a seller or booster puts the whole account, not just the order, at stake.
- No restoration. Steam Support does not restore items that have left an account for any reason, including trades, market transactions and gifting, so a delivery scam or a mistaken trade is final.
Red Flags to Avoid
- Sellers who ask you to turn off Steam Guard or the Mobile Authenticator “to speed up delivery”; that removes the trade hold that protects you.
- Any delivery that needs your Steam login, or a farming service that plays on your account for you.
- Rare skins priced far below the Steam Community Market, which usually means a hacked account or card fraud behind the supply.
- Resource bundles sold with no server named and no mention of its wipe day, as if the stock were permanent.
- Payment only by crypto, gift cards or bank transfer, with no marketplace in between.
If You Decide to Go Ahead
We can’t make a purchase Facepunch’s Terms allow. If you still buy, use a marketplace with buyer protection, never share your Steam login, confirm the exact server and its next wipe day before paying, pay with a method you can dispute, and keep records. Our Rust page lists the sellers we review with their scores.
Lower-Risk Alternatives
For skins, use the route Facepunch itself names: the Steam Item Store and the Steam Community Market, where the trade runs inside Steam and the 15-day hold protects both sides. One caution: skins sold through Rust’s newer in-game store are not tradable at all, so treat those as account cosmetics, not assets you can resell. For resources, the lower-risk option is to earn them — scrap comes from barrels, crates and monument runs, and vending machines and the Outpost marketplace let you trade it with other players on your own server. Our Rust farming guides, linked from the game page, cover the fast scrap routes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is buying Rust items allowed?
Not outside the routes Facepunch authorises. Section 7 of its Terms says virtual goods generally cannot be bought, sold or traded in any way, except through authorised platform routes such as the Steam Marketplace.
How are Rust resources delivered?
In person, on your server. Scrap, components and gear exist only inside one server, so the seller joins it and hands the items over — and the forced wipe on the first Thursday of the month deletes them.
Can I get my skins back if a trade goes wrong?
No. Steam Support does not restore items that have left an account for any reason, including trades, market transactions, deletions or gifting.
Sources
- Facepunch Terms of Service, section 7: Virtual Goods (read Oct 16, 2026)
- Facepunch Support: EAC Banned (read Oct 16, 2026)
- Steam Subscriber Agreement (read Oct 16, 2026)
- Valve: Security and Trading — why the 15 day wait (read Oct 16, 2026)
- Pro Game Guides: when do forced wipes and server wipes happen in Rust (read Oct 16, 2026)
- TechRaptor: permanent Rust in-game store added with premium cosmetics (read Oct 16, 2026)
- The Escapist: Valve no longer replacing Steam items lost to trade scams (read Oct 16, 2026)
