Singleplayer vs. Multiplayer: A Tale of Two Cities
One crucial thing to understand about SCUM is that it straddles the line between a singleplayer sandbox and a multiplayer survival game, and does not particularly excel in either one. In my view, the game was always primarily designed as a multiplayer experience, and if you try to play it strictly singleplayer, you’ll quickly notice the emptiness.
Singleplayer (PvE): Playing SCUM solo was basically making your own fun in a big open world, largely void of content. There are no endgame goals beyond survival, no satisfying quest system, no storyline and the only human presence was the occasional trader NPC at safe zones. It was akin to a huge wilderness exploration simulator – gorgeous, but purposeless once you saw everything. I love playing the sandbox, primarily because I have fallen in love with the beauty of the Scum island. It reminds me very much of Croatia, where the game is taking place, in particular to the island Brac in Croatia upon which the game’s island is based off. But there is little purpose, little challenges for oldtimers, no skill checks, no progression other than the advancement for the sake of progression.
There are now quests in Scum, but in reality, these are very rudimentary – think fetch 3 soaps quests or kill seven puppets with a sharp weapon. It’s nice that it exists, but it’s nowhere near what its intended to be and planned for years. As it stands now, SCUM is not a story-driven or objective-based singleplayer game. If you play singleplayer, you must be self-directed: set your own goals (build a base, explore every POI, max out a skill, etc.), because the game won’t present a narrative to follow. The developers themselves have likened singleplayer mode to a “sandbox” for learning or creativity, rather than a true singleplayer game. I have to agree; despite the new sprinkling of quests and bots, SCUM doesn’t offer the kind of curated solo experience that something like Project Zomboid or 7 Days to Die can with their progression or story elements. It remains best for making your own adventure or simply appreciating the island’s beauty in peace.
Multiplayer (PvP/PvE): Multiplayer is where SCUM shows both its greatest strengths and its biggest flaws. On the positive side, the tension of encountering other players in this unforgiving world can be incredible. Early Access SCUM had moments of pure emergent gameplay gold – alliances formed over a campfire, betrayals over a piece of loot, massive base raids, you name it. The map supported up to 64 players initially, and some private servers pushed beyond that. The game’s complexity with metabolism, variety of weapons, and huge map can make for a deeply engaging survival PvP experience… if it’s well-balanced. And that’s the rub: SCUM’s multiplayer has never been well-balanced or fair for all playstyles.
It heavily favors large coordinated groups.
By design, Scum allows players to claim land and build bases, and then other players to raid those bases for loot. Initially, there were no safe zones for your base, which appeared only in later additions for private servers and few official PvE servers. This meant that if you were a lone wolf or small group of friends building a base, you were almost certain to be raided by a bigger fish eventually. In the early days, this happened to new players so consistently that many would quit in frustration – imagine spending two weeks fortifying your base and collecting gear, only to log in and find your walls blown open and everything gone. This risk is part of the thrill in theory (similar to Rust or DayZ), but Scum exacerbated it by having no limits on raiding and huge disparities in resources between clans and solos. I mentioned earlier the phenomenon of big clans hoarding vehicles; they also dominate the economy of a server, often controlling high-tier loot areas and conducting raids systematically. On official servers (which are essentially PvP free-for-alls with minimal moderation), large clans often made it their mission to raid every other base and destroy all competition, across servers, effectively ruining the experience for countless others. There were no mechanisms to prevent or discourage this – it was totally “legal” by game rules. Only private servers with private admins could put a stop to such behavior.
Another sore point in multiplayer was cheating, especially in the early years. Hackers ran wild with aimbots and wallhacks, erasing days and weeks of progress in minutes. Since there were no official admins on official servers, cheating ran rampant and culprits could only be banned when the players complained on forums and discord, managing to bring a lone developer or moderator to the server in question.
With 1.0 the developers finally upgraded their anti-cheat measures, switching to BattlEye to more aggressively ban cheaters. Early signs seem to be positive; the plague of hackers is nowhere near what it was at launch of the game. This makes PvP at least a fair fight against legitimate players. It’s a much-needed improvement for those of us who remember the bad old days of getting sniped by invisible players.
Even with cheats under control, SCUM multiplayer still suffers from identity issues and balancing problems. Is it trying to be like DayZ, a survival PvP sandbox? Partly, but then it has base building and raiding like Rust, which encourages long-term clan warfare and offline raiding – something DayZ doesn’t emphasize as much. Meanwhile it also has extremely in-depth PvE survival mechanics (diet, metabolism, diseases etc.) that rival Project Zomboid, yet in multiplayer nobody has time to appreciate those because you’re likely to get shot by a player long before you starve or succumb to trench foot. The result is a game that doesn’t fully satisfy any particular audience: pure PvPers often find SCUM too slow-paced and convoluted, while pure PvE survival players find it too PvP-centric and brutal. Casual players get turned off by the huge time investment needed to gear up, only to lose everything in a heartbeat. Hardcore players… well, some thrive on the cruelty of it, but many others just migrate to games that have a clearer focus.
I have personally oscillated between multiplayer and singleplayer over the years – playing PvP when I have a group of friends interested, then retreating to singleplayer when I just want to explore and build without the stress. SCUM accommodates both, but neither mode feels completely satisfying on its own. The game lacks a clear vision: should it focus on providing rich PvE content for solo/co-op play (like story missions, AI factions, etc.), or should it double down on being a competitive survival arena with strong focus on mere PvP gameplay? Right now it attempts a bit of everything, which results in a kind of jack-of-all-trades design. As a player, you have to set your own goals and find a community that matches your preferred style (there are modded servers with rules for PvP, or PvE-only servers, etc.). I can’t stress enough that SCUM can be amazing with the right group of people – some of my best gaming moments came from intense clan battles or hilarious roleplay encounters on private servers. But those experiences happened in spite of the game’s systems, not because of a finely tuned design.
Quo Vadis, Scum?
After reaching the 1.0 milestone, SCUM stands at a crossroads. It’s a survival game that still seems unsure of what kind of survival game it wants to be. The developers have poured a ton of disparate features into it over the years – some of them truly fantastic, others half-finished – without a visionary direction. The result is that Scum at 1.0 is a bit of an identity crisis.
On one hand, you have Scum the hardcore survival simulator: detailed metabolism, realistic ballistics, injuries and sickness, an expansive open world simulation of life on a deserted island. This aspect appeals to the PvE survival enthusiasts who love games like Project Zomboid or The Long Dark, where managing your character’s health and environment is key. Scum’s PvE systems (hunting, cooking, crafting, weather survival) can indeed scratch that itch – the devil is in the details, and Scum has detail in spades.
On the other hand, you have Scum the PvP sandbox: base building, raiding, territory control, and shootouts with other players akin to Rust or DayZ. This attracts the competitive crowd who relish high-stakes player interaction and conflict. SCUM tries to cater to them with features like killboxes (instanced PvP events), a fame point system for respawning, and now armed NPCs to spice up PvE between fights.
The trouble is, these two sides of the game often work against each other. The pace and investment required by the survival sim side (spending hours to gather food, maintain gear, travel cautiously) are at odds with the sudden wipeout nature of the PvP side (get sniped, lose everything in a second, respawn across half the map in your underwear). It’s disheartening to meticulously micromanage vitamins and energy intake for hours, only to get killed by a bushwookie, all that careful investment erased gone. By comparison, a game like DayZ has fewer complex systems, so when you die and restart, you will get your hands on a fully functioning weapon and ammo much sooner than in Scum.
Furthermore, Scum lacks a clear endgame or meta-goal. DayZ is pure sandbox (just see how long you survive); Rust is cyclical (dominate until the wipe); Project Zomboid is about inevitable death (how long can you last in the apocalypse). Scum, after seven years, still hasn’t decided what “winning” or progressing means. There’s an idea from its lore: you need to escape from the island, maybe you earn your freedom by impressing an audience. But in-game, there is no implementation of that concept – at least not yet, even with 1.0 released– no final extraction or rescue. After 1.0, we still don’t have a metanarrative or any way to escape the island, despite that being teased as a long-term goal. As a result, Scum is just… Escape from Tarkov, only on an island.
This aimlessness could be fine if the journey is rewarding enough. But as described, the journey is rocky due to balance issues and undeveloped features. The game needs to decide on its direction and polish the heck out of it. Is the focus going to be on rich PvE (perhaps developing those factions, expanding quests, making the world feel alive with AI)? Then they need to flesh that out and ensure singleplayer/offline is compelling. Is the focus on brutal PvP and base warfare? Then mechanics like raiding, base defense, and clan systems need refinement, and maybe some concessions to solos (or clearly label itself as a team-focused game). Right now it’s neither here nor there, and that uncertainty from the devs trickles down to the player base, who are constantly debating what SCUM “should” be. I can only hope that post-1.0, Gamepires will communicate a clearer roadmap that aligns all these systems towards a directed vision, rather than continuing to bolt on many shiny features in different directions.
