Dead Matter – Zombie Survival launches into Early Access in disastrous state

Six years ago, Dead Matter launched a new project that was supposed to be a hope for the genre for many survival fans. Three years later, a closed alpha followed, which was only playable under NDA.
Now Dead Matter started in Early Access on Steam – and disappoints all along the line.

State of the Early Access version

Actually, Dead Matter should have been the survival hope that sends games like DayZ to the boards. The promises were great, with which the developers first secured over 1.5 million euros in support on Kickstarter and Indiegogo and later the support of the Tencent corporation.

But what the closed alpha of Zombie Survival, which was under NDA, only hinted at, became a sad certainty on September 16, 2023, after more than six years.

Yes, Dead Matter has entered Early Access – and yes, unfortunately, it is a bitter disappointment.

Even after the first few minutes in the game, and even in the main menu in some cases, players are already struggling with performance problems and bugs. This apparently continues in the further course of the game – and playing with high settings seems to be virtually impossible.

In the game itself, zombies await you – lots of zombies. However, they all look the same – except for the color of their shirts -, don’t seem to have any collision with the game world, and have heads that have degenerated into strange polygon blobs.
The vehicles in the game are often unusable, flying through the area out of the blue, or the player gets stuck in them or a part of the landscape they are driving through.

The loot and item system reacts sluggishly and is also riddled with bugs, weapons aren’t recognized for the corresponding slots, ammo isn’t loaded or melee weapons apparently don’t cause any damage.

The game world only seems to be completed in a tiny part. In addition to a quite nicely modeled city (but with quite a few buildings half sinking into the ground), there are many wooded areas and roads that lead nowhere.
Partly, white blocks and sharp edges can be found in the world, from which the players sometimes even fall out of the game world.

Some available NPCs in the game are even still pure placeholders and conduct dialogs with the player that don’t lead to any results.

In short: Anyone who logs in will have seen everything Dead Matter has to offer in its current version after about 15 minutes.

The curious thing about the whole thing is that the now released version seems to be quite a bit regressive to the one that was playable in the closed alpha of Dead Matter.
Why the developers decided to take this step is questionable.

Radio silence since release

The above circumstances give Dead Matter a score of “Very Negative” on Steam after not even 48 hours, with only 8% of players leaving the game a good review – and those positive reviews include phrases like “Might have been the worst game I’ve ever played!”.

Developer QI Games is asking a whopping 38.99€ for Dead Matter on Steam – and is reducing it to 35.09€ for release. You can think what you want about that.

The developers have not yet given any feedback on the criticism from the community – there seems to be absolute silence on all channels.