It’s Spooky Season: Enter the RUST Halloween Contest
Glowing pumpkins are starting to appear around bases, roof camper skulls are haunting mantles and spike walls, and the nights are creeping in earlier each day. Facepunch has decided to dangle the carrot of fame and questionable fortune in front of the RUST skinning community once again. Yes, the Halloween 2025 Skin Contest is officially live.
Deadlines & Fine Print
If you want in, circle Tuesday, October 7th at 11:59 PM PST on your calendar. Or don’t, and then blame Facepunch when you forget. Either way, that’s the cutoff.
Contest rules are the usual grab bag of “don’t be lazy” and “don’t be awful”:
- Tag your entry with #Rustober2025, or it might as well not exist.
- Old submissions are about as welcome as a twig-door “base” in a wipe. Don’t reuse previously submitted skins.
- No AI art, no stolen content/copyrighted works, no edgy hate-skins. (Groundbreaking stuff.)
- Expect to provide proof of your work with renders and a video of the art process. Yes, you actually have to do the work.
- And for the tech-heads: submissions need to be hi-res, with PBR and normals baked correctly. In other words, if your texture looks like it was hand-painted in MS Paint, maybe sit this one out.
- You get one skin or a small set (2–3 pieces max). If you try to shotgun 12 zombie hoodies into the workshop, congratulations…you’re disqualified.
- Variants are fine, within reason. (Glow/no glow, different colorways. Not 16 shades of pumpkin orange.)
For complete details, be sure to check out the official posting.
The Schedule
- Week 1 Deadline: October 7th – Entries due.
- Week 2: No new skins, but Helk picks from qualifying submissions.
- October 23rd: Top 10 staff-voted skins hit the shop.
- October 30th: RUST’s Halloween update launches with the rest of the spooky lineup.
- November 6th: Normal shop rotation resumes, everyone pretends it was all normal.
So basically, if you want your skin in front of thousands of RUST players for Halloween, this is your shot.
Bonus: Vote for Future Skin Types
Because apparently deciding between 47 jack-o-lantern facemasks wasn’t enough, Facepunch is letting you vote on what should be skin-able next:
Your votes may or may not influence the outcome, depending on Helk’s mood that morning.
Closing the Coffin
Want to test your luck, artistry, and tolerance for Discord skinning debates? You’ll want to join the official skinning Discord. Otherwise, just sit back, crack open a pumpkin latte, and wait for someone else’s glowing skeleton hoodie to drain your wallet come October 23rd.
