Seven years. That’s how long it took for SCUM to graduate from Steam Early Access (launched in 2018) to its 1.0 “full release” in June 2025. As a long-time prisoner on SCUM’s island (over 3000 hours played during these seven years), I had high hopes that version 1.0 would finally realize the game’s vast potential. SCUM is an open-world survival sandbox renowned for its ambitious depth – from a detailed metabolism system to a huge 225 km² map – and I genuinely love this game’s concept and its mesmerizing setting. Unfortunately, SCUM 1.0 arrives in name only, falling far short of what many fans expected after such a prolonged development. In this review and retrospective, I’ll dive into what the 1.0 update did (and didn’t) deliver, how the game has evolved (or regressed) over its Early Access years, and where it stands now. Despite some shining aspects – SCUM’s stunning environment and innovative ideas still captivate me – the reality is that I’ve lost faith in the developers’ vision. Let’s explore why.
Unfinished and Missing Features at “Full Release”
It’s painful to say, but SCUM 1.0 still feels incomplete. Several features that were teased or expected long ago remain either unimplemented or poorly executed, even as the game sheds its Early Access label – and if we are to discuss why they even bothered to “come out” of Early Access it would be, in my humble opinion, the pressure from the player base, perhaps even from Valve/Steam to push the games out of perpetual Early Access phase. Seven years seems like sufficient testing, don’t you think?
- Advanced Skills: The character skill system in SCUM promised a lot of skills that were never implemented, such as Heavy Weapons, Swimming, Sailing, Programming, Animal Handling and others(riding a horse across the island is an unfulfilled wish of many). For years, we looked at these skills being greyed out in the character creation screen. Now, they are completely gone. One of the developers stated that the “expansion of character skills will be something the team will work on in the subsequent updates to the game”, but after seven years of EA this statement sounds hollow, to say the least.
- Puppet Spawn System is Still a Nightmare: SCUM’s primary PvE enemies are the “puppets” (infected zombie-like humans). Unfortunately, the puppet spawning system remains one of the most hated aspects of the game. Puppets have a bad habit of spawning right on top of you or in unrealistic ways, making exploration feel unfair. The community has begged for a spawn rework for years, but 1.0 didn’t meaningfully improve this. Developers did claim to introduce a new “intelligent encounter system” where puppets spawn based on player noise or entering certain zones, ostensibly to replace the old random spawns. In practice, however, puppets still pop into existence in jarring ways and sometimes late (or even respawn behind you while you’re looting). The result is that clearing an area never feels secure – an unseen puppet might materialize and attack at any moment. This unpredictable wave spawning is more annoying than challenging, and it is high time the devs truly fix the puppet AI/spawn mechanics instead of fiddling on a broken system. Here, however, the devs that usually listen to the community, have dug their heels in and are sticking to their guns.
On the bright side, puppets did learn a couple new tricks: they can now vault through windows (it can be turned off in settings), which was both cute and scary the first time I saw it. It adds a tad more dynamism to encounters, but doesn’t fix the core spawn issue. - Clunky Melee Combat: Hand-to-hand or melee weapon combat in SCUM has never been a strong point, and it still hasn’t gotten the overhaul it desperately needs. The hit detection and animations are awkward – sometimes you miss swings at point-blank range or hit through walls, and fighting puppets with melee feels laggy and unsatisfying. There’s depth on paper (stamina, skill influence), but in practice melee is lacking. The community has been very vocal that melee combat needs to be smoother and more impactful. As of 1.0, however, no significant improvements have been made. Given how important melee is in a survival scenario (you can’t always rely on guns), this system still feels like a placeholder from an early alpha. It’s another longstanding issue that the developers have not prioritized due to lack of time, as they themselves often stated…
- Bare-Bones Map & Lackluster Interface: If you’re a new player hoping 1.0 added a modern in-game map or better UI , you need to curb your enthusiasm. SCUM’s map is functional only in the most basic sense. You see the topography and named grid sectors, but you still cannot add custom markers or notes, and the map offers no help beyond showing your general vicinity (and even that requires finding a compass or map item on some settings). Considering the island’s huge size, not being able to mark locations or waypoints is a major annoyance. Other survival games allow drawing on the map or placing pins for a reason – it’s realistic (who wouldn’t mark a map if they had one?) and player-friendly. SCUM still lacks this convenience in 1.0. A more functional map UI, with player markers, waypoint pings, or at least manual drawing tools, is something many have asked for to no avail. The game’s interface in general remains utilitarian and sometimes cumbersome, showing that polish on QoL features was not a focus for the “full release.”
- Content Removed and Never Restored: Perhaps most disheartening, SCUM 1.0 still has less content in some areas than it did years ago, because the developers removed features during reworks and haven’t returned them. For example, character tattoos were present in early versions (fitting the prison vibe) but were removed when the devs updated player models – two years later, tattoos are still MIA. The dynamic hair growth system (where your character’s hair and beard would grow over time) also vanished after a model update and has not come back. Even certain items and vehicles were taken out in the past and remain absent: the inflatable boat (RIB) that once let us zip across water is gone; the iconic Hellrider truck vanished and will probably never return. There was a Sport bike in the game as well, with its own particular handling and features, now gone for over two years. One peculiar example was the disappearance of one “influencer” item, Fooster’s machete, which disappeared from the game some 2 years ago, developers said “some items are bugged and will be restored” and we never got that one back. Content rollback without full reimplementation is a trend we’ve seen throughout SCUM’s development, and it tempers any excitement for new additions when older ones disappear in exchange.
In short, many of the core systems and promised features are either unfinished or unchanged in 1.0. Instead of addressing these longstanding needs, the developers focused this update elsewhere – not necessarily where the community wanted. Everybody was asking for a proper, feature-complete 1.0; what we got feels more like a regular patch labeled “1.0” to satisfy a version number milestone.
