Garry’s Mod creator Garry Newman is attempting to calm fans angry that he is prototyping a new game while Rust remains unfinished.

Last week Newman’s studio Facepunch announced a twin-stick shooter called Riftlight – an announcement that was met with vitriol from some Rust players who believe Rust should be finished first.

“Are we crazy? Are we doing it wrong? Should every person in the company be working on the same thing? Should HBO make one TV show at a time? Should Warner Brothers make one movie at a time?” Newman asked rhetorically on the Facepunch blog.

“Our strategy at the moment is to hire talented people to make the games they want to play. We're not asking you to fund this.

“We're not starting a Kickstarter and begging you for money – we're funding it,” he added.

“We are spending money Rust and Garry's Mod make to do this. Arguing that we should be re-investing that money back into only those games is like telling Apple they can't spend the money they made from iPhone and Macs to fund the development of the iPad.”

Facepunch spent the money Garry’s Mod made to develop Rust and that worked out okay, said Newman.

“I think a good company develops continually, and the more things we're working on the better. I think this strategy is working out for us so far.

“Some commenters have expressed their feelings that they 'funded' Rust and we're running off with the money. None of this sentence is true.

“We funded Rust for 1-2 years before it eventually became what it is. You bought early access to it. When you buy a pizza you aren't funding Dominos, you're just buying a pizza.

“It's true that the sales of Rust have been insane and we have stepped up development to suit, and I think you only have to compare the experimental version to the live version to see that.”

Speaking with Kotaku, Newman said that only one of his 25 employees is working on Riftlight.

“It's not a big project by any means – it's just a prototype,” he said.

“Of those 25 staff we have 5 working on prototypes. All of those are people that were hired specifically for their ability to make games on their own.

“I worked it out today to see how much of our budget we were actually spending. This year, we spent 0.04% of Rust's income on prototyping. That's not even counting Garry’s Mod's income.

“The Rust team haven't lost any people.

“I think it's important to say realise that most studios are working on these prototypes (they'd be stupid if they weren't). The only difference between us and them is that we intend to do it in the open by posting regular devblogs about them.”