How to Ban or Unban a Player on Your Rust Server

The ability to ban is built into every Rust server out of the box, preventing unwanted players from connecting to and playing on your server. Of course, you can also unban a player that you have previously banned if you would like them to be able to play on your server again.

Important

If you do not know a player's SteamID or do not know how to find it, check out our guide here.

# Banning a Player or Steam ID

There are two methods to ban a player from your server.

The first method is via their SteamID. Each Steam user has an ID associated with their account. When banned, that account will be unable to connect to your server again, regardless of their username.

The second method is via their ingame username. This method gets the SteamID of the connected user and bans them via that. Due to this, it is only possible to ban via username while the user is online.

Commands	Description
`/banid "Steam_ID" ["optional_reason"]`	Bans a user based on their SteamID.
`/ban "user_name" ["optional_reason"]`	Pulls the Steam ID of the connected user with said username. Then bans the SteamID.

# Unbanning a Steam ID

You may only unban users via their Steam ID as the server does not keep track of banned usernames. The following command can be used to unban a Steam ID from your server.

Commands	Description
`/unban user_ID`	Unbans a user based on their SteamID. Unlike the ban commands, do not include quotes around the userid.

# Viewing Banned Steam IDs

To view a list of what Steam ID's are currently banned on your server, use the following command.

Commands	Description
`/banlistex`	Will display a list of all currently banned users alongside the reason if present.

# The Banlist File

The banlist is stored in the Server Files under server/my_server_identity/cfg/bans.cfg. This file is mainly used for importing/exporting ban player information.