Deadside is a fun but ultimately unrewarding survival game that lacks the legs to compete with more popular titles in the genre, such as Rust and DayZ.
Co-op Multiplayer.
PvP Multiplayer.
Allowing players to choose an avatar that represents them as a person isn’t part of some radical SJW agenda; it’s common sense: the greater connection a player has with their character and, by extension, the game, the more likely they are to stick around and recommend it to others.
The fact that the developers have felt it is more important to add “yet another” gun several times before adding a female character model is baffling, especially when you consider that games that offer a wide selection of diverse character models enjoy far greater engagement than titles that limit players to only a single-gender or race.
The Deadside community is pretty decent for the genre. When playing on multiple servers, I was impressed by the community spirit and activity of the chat channels. While there was plenty of toxicity to be found on more active servers, there was also a lot of friendly chat and a willingness to trade and help others with PvE events.
Perhaps the relatively small player base has helped foster a less toxic community, or the abundance of loot and ease of acquisition created a less competitive environment; either way, Deadside had one of the most inviting and least hostile survival game communities in 2022 and served as a great gateway for those new to the genre but interested in playing a PvP-focused survival game.
Deadside is one of the few survival games to offer players safe zones, ensuring that new players have a way to store some of their gear and weapons safely away from veteran players who seek to steal them.
In addition, safe zones allow players to purchase items from vendors and trade with other players in a safe environment.
Deadside allows for seven male faces and a single body type, with the vast majority of facial options being a variation of the base white male model.
In short, if you are not white, male and have short hair, you are out of luck when it comes to customisation.
While a moderator has said that the developers would like to add female models in the future, nothing has been said since June 2020, in a thread that was quickly locked down due to toxic Steam users who equate wanting to play as your gender as being “woke” or promoting the “SJW agenda”.
Deadside is a survival video game developed by Bad Pixel and published by Bad Pixel, TinyBuild, it was released on 14 April 2020 and retails for $19.99.
Deadside is available exclusively on PC.
We most recently checked on how Deadside was doing in October 2024. You can read all about our findings in the article titled "Is Deadside Worth Playing in 2024?".
Deadside offers the following matchmaking options:
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Deadside is unrated and contains:
Deadside is a decent game, but I would not choose to play it over DayZ or any other established survival game; the genre is based around risk and reward. Frankly, there is not enough risk in Deadside to make playing it for more than an hour or so feel rewarding.
Within 5 minutes of spawning, I had looted a pistol, killed three bots, a fully geared player, and found myself flush with cash, top-end gear, two modified special weapons and enough ammo to conduct a small war.
After that, there was little for me to do but go and fight more players and hope some of them had better gear than I did to make the fight worth it (they didn’t).
As someone who is only moderately skilled at pvp in survival games, I was disappointed that I could not find anyone who provided much of a challenge. Most battles resulted in the other player dying before they could land more than a glancing blow.
Risk/Reward is needed to attract players who, by their presence and ability, force other players to improve or band together in self-defence.
Without this element of risk, players become apathetic and provide little challenge for those experienced in PvP, and it is for this reason that I cannot recommend Deadside when so many better options are available.
