Hypothetically, if I was writing an open source library for game development or HFT (two other big users of C++ code), would the Rust community respond similarly to use of unsafe code? In HFT at least we have zero concern for buffer overflow vulnerabilities and the like because we're not on the open internet, rather we're running in a colo directly connected to the exchange, so we face no risk from security vulnerabilities in code (as long as the code works as intended). I imagine it's similar for games, where unless you're writing DRM it doesn't matter if somebody gets root on their own gaming device (and even if your code is perfectly secure, they can still try to modify the code in memory to exploit it).

In which case the "downside" from unsafe code is much less (it's not going to leak an entire database of people's private details to the web), so would people still make such a big fuss about removing it? Especially if removing it involves any performance compromise, which in HFT at least would be unacceptable (or at least politically unacceptable when trying to sell Rust).