SCUM June Update Preview: Free-Roaming Animals Return

// UPDATE //

The June Into the Wild update is now scheduled for Tuesday, June 30.

We’re moving the update by one day so the team can take extra time for final checks and fixes before release.

Thanks for your patience. We’ll share the full patch notes when the update is live.
___

Hey there, Prisoners!

Free-roaming animals are coming back to SCUM with the second Into The Wild update, going live on Monday 29th June.

This update continues our run of hunting, fishing, farming, cooking, and wilderness survival changes, with free-roaming wildlife as the focus of this preview.

Today, we’re opening a Free-Roaming Animals Public Alpha so players can try the feature early and help us tune it before release. More details on that below.

Important: June's update will include a partial wipe of official servers.

Character stats and gold will not be wiped. Bases, gear, and supplies on official servers will be cleared, so you can sell off gear and supplies before the update and use that gold again after the wipe.

Partial wipes will not be enforced on private servers. Moving forward, our aim is to line official server wipes up with the start of each new themed update cycle.

Now, here’s a look at what’s coming!

SETTING THE ISLAND'S WILDLIFE FREE

One of the biggest pieces of work coming in the June update is the return of free-roaming animals to the island.

We know how much this matters to players, and to the feel of SCUM. Wildlife makes every journey across the island feel more alive and gives hunting a more natural rhythm.  

SCUM has had free-roaming animals before but bringing them back properly has meant more than switching the old system on again.

The earlier version came with a real server performance cost. Every active animal adds work for the server, alongside players, puppets, vehicles, bases, loot, traps, combat, travel, and everything else happening across the island. As SCUM has grown, that cost has become even more important to solve properly.

To support their return, the team has been working to create more server headroom and reduce the load animals place on the server. That means wildlife can exist more naturally across SCUM without putting the same pressure on the server at every distance.

Close to players, animals need the behaviours and reactions that make an encounter feel believable. Further away, they can keep moving through the island in a lighter state, while the server focuses more detail where it matters most.

Wildlife should feel like it is already out there, not just appearing when you start a hunt or place bait. That means quiet stretches still matter, alongside distant movement, spotting tracks, and moments where you hear something nearby before you ever see it.

Hunts should start to take more unexpected turns, with prey and predators crossing paths, and carcasses potentially attracting the wrong kind of attention. That mix helps make SCUM’s wilderness feel alive.

We’ll share a deeper look when the update goes live, including how the team approached this work.

JOIN THE FREE-ROAMING ANIMALS PUBLIC ALPHA

Free-Roaming Animals: Public Alpha is now live.

Free-roaming land animals need to feel right across the whole island, not just in controlled internal tests. That includes animal density, hunting flow, predator and prey encounters, server performance, and the kind of issues that only show up when more players are out there together.

That’s why we’re opening this build early. You can try the feature before the June update goes live, and your feedback will help us tune how free-roaming wildlife feels before release.

How To Access the Public Alpha

You can access the Public Alpha through Steam:

1. Open your Steam Library
2. Right-click SCUM
3. Select Properties
4. Open the Betas tab
5. Select the Public Alpha branch

Once you are on the Public Alpha branch, join one of the available Public Alpha servers listed below.

Public Alpha Server List

Important Notes

This is a Public Alpha build, so you may run into bugs, performance issues, balance issues, crashes, or odd animal behaviour.

If you play single-player, please back up your save files before switching branches.

Public Alpha server files will not be available for private server owners. This test is focused on Official Public Alpha servers so the team can collect the logs, crash dumps, and live data before release.

Feedback

We’ve opened up dedicated Discord channels for discussion and reports.

We’ve also pinned a structured feedback survey, so you can tell us how the new wildlife feels after spending time with it.

We’re especially interested in how wildlife feels across the island, and anything that feels too frequent, too quiet, too punishing, or not quite right yet.

MORE IN THE JUNE UPDATE

Free-roaming animals are the focus of this preview, but they're not the only thing coming in this update. June will also bring Trophy Fish Wall Mounts, a Hunting Fundamentals task, bug fixes, balance updates, quality-of-life improvements, and more Into The Wild changes.

We’ll share the full patch notes when the update goes live on Monday 29th June.

May started this run of updates, June continues it, and July will keep building on it.

See you on the island!