Before you let someone into your group, check five things by their SteamID: project bans and their reason, Steam bans, real hours against Steam hours, account age and friends with bans. It takes a couple of minutes in RustRecon. This is not paranoia: many projects ban for playing with a cheater, and Facepunch hands out manual bans for it that lock you out of official servers. A cheater on your team can cost you your account too.
Why check before teaming
In Rust a teammate gets access to everything: door codes, TC auth, shared loot. Problems usually come in three kinds:
- Cheater. The main risk. Bans for playing with a cheater exist both on Russian projects and at Facepunch.
- Group limit breaker. If someone has already been banned for going over a server’s group limit, on a server with a limit they can drag you down with them.
- Rat. Takes the loot and leaves for the neighbours. No check shows this; more on that below.
The checklist
- Get a profile link or SteamID. Asking is normal, a SteamID is not a secret. If someone refuses, that is already a signal. Where to find the number is covered in how to find a SteamID.
- Look at project bans. They carry the most weight. The reason matters more than the fact: a ban for chat abuse and a ban for cheating are different stories. Pay extra attention to bans for refusing a check, for cheats on a linked account and for playing with a cheater. More in how to check a player’s bans.
- Look at Steam bans. A game ban on a Rust player is a serious reason to look closer, but Steam does not say which game it came from. VAC versus game bans is covered in VAC ban vs game ban.
- Compare hours. Steam hours against real hours on servers. Thousands of hours on Steam against a couple of dozen on servers looks like padding.
- Check account age. A fresh account plus confident play is a question. How to read it is in account age and cheaters.
- Look at friends. If the friend list is public, the report counts the share of friends with bans. Cheaters tend to play with cheaters.
- Read the names. A rename on its own means nothing. A rename on the day of a ban is different.
- Combat stats last. K/D without context says little. How to read it is in what is a good K/D in Rust.
The free report shows Steam bans, Rust hours on Steam, account age and how many projects banned the player. Which projects and why, real hours, names and combat stats come with Pro, and your first full report is free.
How to read the results
| What you see | Fine | Worth a closer look |
|---|---|---|
| Project bans | None, or an old chat ban | Cheating, refused check, playing with a cheater |
| Hours | Steam and servers roughly match | Many times more on Steam than on servers |
| Account age | Years, long server history | Weeks, yet plays confidently |
| Friends | No bans, or one or two | A noticeable share banned |
| Names | Changes for wipes and clans | Renamed on the day of a project ban |
One signal from the right column is not a verdict. Two or three at once is a reason to pass, or at least not to hand out TC auth on day one.
If they come as a group
People often ask to join as a duo or trio. Then check each of them separately: a ban for playing with a cheater lands because of any one of them.
To see the group as a whole, use Recon. Add up to eight SteamIDs and it shows:
- when each of them usually plays;
- the hours when the whole group is offline;
- who tends to be online together.
The last one tells you whether these people really play together, as they claim. The schedule tells you whether their online hours overlap with yours: a teammate who only plays at night while you sleep will not help much on defence. One trial Recon is free, after that it is Pro.
Check the person before you give them codes and TC auth. Kicking someone from the team is easy; changing every code after a rat is not.
What a check will not show
- Behaviour. Ratting, toxicity and a habit of defecting to the next clan over do not show up in open data.
- The future. A clean account today does not stop someone from installing a cheat tomorrow.
- Anything outside BattleMetrics. If they only played on servers BattleMetrics does not track, they will have almost no real hours.
The report is not a cheat detector. It gathers open data and shows what each signal is worth; the decision is yours. The best rat test is still the old one: no full access to the loot room for the first wipe.