Proxies for Rust: EAC bans, the server list and the Facepunch rules

Most people who search for a Rust proxy want one of four things. They want a way back after a ban, lower ping, a fix for a server list that looks wrong, or a cheaper copy from another region. Facepunch, Easy Anti-Cheat and Steam have written down an answer to each. We read their texts on October 14, 2026, as text from our server: Facepunch's terms, support articles and devblogs, the Easy Anti-Cheat help page and Steam's agreement. In short, Rust bans sit on the account, and for repeat offenders on the hardware. A VPN skews the server list, and Steam forbids hiding your country to buy. Nothing on this page routes Rust through a proxy.

EAC bans are permanent

When Rust shows "EAC banned", support says the account "has been banned by the EasyAntiCheat system for cheating". The article is blunt: "All EAC bans are permanent", and EasyAntiCheat "will not lift EAC bans on request". If a round of bans turns out to be wrong, the servers reverse it on their own. "Creating a Support ticket or a ban appeal will not cause your ban to be removed".

New accounts get the same treatment: "Any future accounts used in an attempt to bypass the EAC ban are also subject to being banned as well". The ban stays "regardless of who was using your account at the time", and Facepunch does not say which cheat was found. EAC sets each ban for a future date, so it can arrive some time after the cheat ran. The account can still play single-player games and servers without EAC.

The ban reaches Steam as well. A Game Ban appears on the Steam profile, with "the same impact as a VAC ban status", and games and in-game items cannot move to another account. Easy Anti-Cheat's own help page splits the roles. EAC flags an account, and then "the game publisher may subsequently decide to suspend or ban the account from playing again".

Bans for playing with cheaters, and the numbers

Facepunch also bans players who play alongside cheaters. It "collects many forms of data" to decide such cases "beyond a reasonable doubt", and it shares no evidence. Staff place these bans by hand after a review, appeals "will automatically be rejected", and the bans "will not expire". The player can keep playing Rust on community servers.

Facepunch published its count for 2025 in the devblog of January 1, 2026.

The support article on second chances gives the long view: "We've permanently banned over one million accounts to protect the integrity of the game since 2013".

The second chance, and who does not get one

In June 2025 Facepunch opened a narrow way back. "If you were banned over 8 months ago, and you haven't reoffended or ban evaded, you can return, by purchasing Rust on a new account". It adds "We’re not lifting bans" and "This is your one shot".

Hardware bans, the article says, "are only issued to repeat offenders". Bans on community servers are a matter for each server's owner.

Premium and secure servers check the account and the PC

Two newer kinds of server decide who gets in by the account or the computer. Both rules leave the IP address out.

Premium servers arrived in March 2025. "To access Premium Servers, your Rust Steam inventory must be valued at $15 or more", and these servers show up only for accounts that meet the threshold. Abuse of them or of the market gets accounts banned, and "All trades of Rust skins are logged". In January 2026 Facepunch wrote that premium servers are "doing an excellent job of gatekeeping cheaters out". It saw no need to raise the $15 bar.

Secure servers followed in March 2026. A server can now require TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot on the player's PC, and it then shows a Secure tag in the browser. At the start, "Over 80% of players have TPM hardware already but just under 60% of players have Secure Boot enabled right now". Facepunch tested it on six of its own servers and switched six more in October 2026. By then it had seen "reduced cheater presence on these servers a month after release". Its goal is to require it on every server, and it is building the same check for single accounts.

The server list, ping and your IP address

Facepunch explains where the list comes from. The "Rust client asks Steam for all Rust servers", then queries each one, and the servers appear "As the servers reply". So the list differs from one player to the next. A server far from you, one under a DDoS attack, or a line with packet loss all make it look slow. The Rust FAQ adds that servers go down for updates, crashes and DDoS attacks, and that anyone can host one.

The same article has a step for VPN users: "Disable any VPN you have running on your system". Its reason is that the list is "populated geographically to your IP address’s geolocation", so with a VPN "you may see servers not relevant to your current location". It also asks for Steam's server browser pings to be "set to a minimum of 5000" a minute. A server you know can be joined from the F1 console with connect and its IP address and port.

Easy Anti-Cheat has needs of its own on the network. It "uses a standard HTTP/HTTPS connection to client.easyanticheat.net and uses ports 80 and 443". When that connection fails, the game server cannot confirm that EAC is running, and it disconnects you. Without EAC, Rust can join only unsecure servers, which "will not display in the server browser". On October 14, 2026, a search of Facepunch's help center found no article on proxies, and the only article it found on VPNs was the one on the server list.

Buying Rust, Steam's agreement and family sharing

Rust sells on Steam, for $39.99 on the US store on October 14, 2026, and its store data lists Valve Anti-Cheat. Steam's agreement, last revised on September 10, 2026, rules out hiding where you live to buy. Its words: "You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence". The clause covers region limits on content, "pricing not applicable to your geography" and "any other purpose". Valve "may terminate your access to your Account" if you do it.

Family sharing is closed as well. "From February 17th 2021, Steam family sharing for Rust is disabled for the foreseeable future". Each player needs a copy, and "no exceptions can or will be made".

The rules in Facepunch's terms

The Facepunch Terms of Service were last updated on July 15, 2025, and they read the same on October 14, 2026. Use of the games "is for you alone". The rules forbid any attempt to "rent, steal, sell, lend, lease" them, and cheats and automation of every kind. They also count "knowingly playing with cheaters or benefitting from cheating (even if you’re not cheating yourself)" as cheating. Facepunch may run anti-cheat software "in the background of your device or related devices/peripherals", and it uses "both human moderators and technological means". A ban for cheating means you "will lose access to the relevant game and any in-game purchases". Appeals against EAC bans go to Easy Anti-Cheat, and against VAC bans to Steam.

Rust Mobile is a separate game

Rust Mobile is a game for phones, "officially authorised and endorsed by Facepunch Studios" and built by development partners. Facepunch's page on it carries no date. It says the test it describes was "only open in the Canada region with limited numbers of players", on Android only. Testers got access by email, and each signed a non-disclosure agreement. Entry came by invitation, so an address in Canada was never the key. In January 2026 Facepunch wrote that Rust Mobile "will be released globally" that year. On October 14, 2026, rustmobile.com still asked visitors to pre-register. Searches for "rust mobile" average 165,000 a month, and the last three months drew 142% more than the three before them. This page gives no way into a test or a region you were not invited to.

What people search about Rust

Keyword Planner counted 4,400 searches a month worldwide for "rust server list" on October 14, 2026. That is more than the ban phrases in the chart put together. "rust price" drew 2,900. Among the ban questions, "rust bans" averaged 590 and "rust hwid ban" 260. Both are rising: their last three months drew 39% and 70% more searches than the three before. "rust ban appeal" drew 260 and "rust second chance" 70. "rust ip ban", the one English query that showed this page in Search Console, drew 20. Keyword Planner gives no figure for "rust vpn". "rust proxy" draws 210, though Google's suggestions for it are about the programming language. Searches for cheats outnumber all of these, at 9,900 a month for "rust cheats". In Search Console this page had 138 impressions and 2 clicks in 120 days.

What sellers' pages promise

We read the Rust pages of one proxy seller and two game booster sellers on October 14, 2026.

Rayobyte's Rust page, first published in 2021, says "you should definitely use a Rust proxy". It claims "Proxies have higher bandwidth and therefore better network speeds". It also says a semi-dedicated provider can "guarantee that the people sharing your Rust proxy won’t get you banned". Facepunch's articles tie bans to the account and, for repeat offenders, the hardware. None of them names a shared address as a cause, and none recommends a proxy. In June 2026 the same page also offered help to get around bans and geoblocking; by October 14 that section was gone, though its update date still read March 2026.

LagoFast's Rust page calls its product "a wonderful VPN". Its guide to high ping suggests lowering Steam's server list refresh from 5000 to 500. Facepunch's article on a missing server list asks for the opposite on both points: any VPN off, and at least 5000 pings a minute.

GearUP's guide of July 2026 opens with a point that matches Facepunch's own: "In Rust, the server you join decides your ping before you ever touch a setting". It then sells a booster that "re-routes your Rust data", with no measurement behind the claim.

Where a proxy fits

Nothing on this page routes Rust through a proxy, and HProxy sells nothing for Rust. Our proxies serve other work, such as checking your own site or ads from another country, research on public pages, or testing. For other games, see proxies for Steam, proxies for Counter-Strike, proxies for Escape from Tarkov and proxies for Dead by Daylight. For the basics, see what an ISP proxy is, what a residential proxy is and whether free proxies are safe. Our ISP proxies cost $2.70 per IP a month, and residential traffic starts at $0.44 per GB. The free proxy list and the proxy checker cost nothing.

What this page does not cover

• How EAC finds cheats or decides on a hardware ban. Facepunch and Easy Anti-Cheat do not publish it.
• Whether a given community server turns away VPN addresses. Each owner decides, and the plugin site umod.org answered our server with an error, so we did not read it.
• Reddit and other forums. We did not read them.
• Rust Mobile's store listings. We read Facepunch's page and rustmobile.com only.
• Ping through a proxy or a VPN in a match. We did not play Rust, join a server or run the game through a proxy.

The ban numbers and the results on secure servers are Facepunch's own. The next check of this page is due by January 14, 2027.

Sources

We read every source below on October 14, 2026, as text from our server.

• Facepunch, Terms of Service, last updated July 15, 2025.
• Facepunch support: EAC Banned and Banned for playing with cheaters.
• Facepunch support: Ban Second Chances and No servers showing.
• Facepunch support: Premium Servers, How to Turn On TPM & Secure Boot and Guidelines for community servers.
• Facepunch support: EAC: Disconnected, Launching Rust with EAC disabled and Steam family share disabled.
• Rust, Support and FAQ.
• Rust devblogs: Surviving 12 Years, January 1, 2026; Shipshape, March 5, 2026; Livestock Update, October 1, 2026.
• Facepunch, Rust Mobile, undated, and rustmobile.com.
• Valve, Steam Subscriber Agreement, last updated September 10, 2026, and the Rust store page data.
• Easy Anti-Cheat, support articles.
• Wikipedia, Rust (video game), on the early dates and CheatPunch.
• Rayobyte, LagoFast and GearUP, their Rust pages (not linked).
• Google Keyword Planner, worldwide monthly averages for 60 phrases around Rust and Rust Mobile, and Google Search Console for this page.