So far, all player characters in popular PC survival game Rust are male. But in an upcoming update, the development team intends to implement female character models. Female character models are already implemented, in fact; but only for admins so far.
"To clear up some confusion, when we it does [sic] go live you won’t get a choice of whether you’re female or male. We’re not 'taking the choice away' from you. You never had a choice," writes Facepunch Studios lead Garry Newman, in the team's latest developer blog.
The catch? Gender will be randomly assigned, which mirrors Facepunch's policy on race. If gender functions the same as race in Rust, it will also be tied to the player's SteamID and unchangeable.
"I would love nothing more than if playing a black guy in a game made a white guy appreciate what it was like to be a persecuted minority," Newman said at the time the race feature was introduced.
When the female model was first announced, Facepunch's Tom Butters wrote, "We’ve started investigating a female model. We really don’t want to make the female model unrealistic in the sense of her being aesthetically idealized. In the same way that our male models aren’t perfect specimens of the male body, neither should the female be. No huge boobs nor four-inch waists here."