SCUM | Public Alpha Update: New Free-Roaming Wildlife Build Now Live

// 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.
___

Prisoners,

We’ve released a new Alpha Playtest build for free-roaming animals.

Thank you to everyone who has already jumped into the Alpha Playtest and shared feedback. Your reports have helped the team identify issues, validate fixes, and better understand how free-roaming animals behave outside internal testing.

If you’re able to spend some time in the Alpha Playtest, this latest build gives the team more to learn from. Free-roaming animals behave differently across servers, locations, times of day, player counts, and playstyles, so continued testing helps us validate fixes and spot edge cases before the system moves closer to release.

This build focuses on improving animal behaviour, population updates, death states, performance, and some of the issues reported during recent tests.

CHANGES IN THE LATEST PUBLIC ALPHA [JUNE 25TH]

This Public Alpha update focuses on animal perception, bait feeders, movement, combat behavior, audio, and performance improvements.

Animal & Hunting System Updates:

• Added a new animal perception system that takes animal type and player camouflage into account
• Added animal reactions to nearby projectile impacts, affecting alert, investigation, flee, and hostile behaviors
• Improved how distant animals activate as players approach, reducing cases where animals appear too late when traveling at higher speeds
• Improved line-of-sight checks for animal behavior
• Updated underlying hunting system logic to support more consistent animal population and bait feeder behavior

Bait Feeder Updates:

• Improved bait feeder spawning behavior
• Improved spawning balance around bait feeders
• Animals should no longer spawn behind players when using bait feeders
• Animals should now move closer to bait feeders more reliably
• Fixed an issue where bait feeders could stop working correctly after a failed animal spawn attempt
• Fixed bait feeder food not expiring correctly
• Fixed a bait feeder crash that could occur when placing unsupported food during specific food requirements

Animal AI & Combat Updates:

• Improved how animals observe and respond to points of interest
• Fixed cases where predators could fail to notice prey
• Refactored animal charge and close-attack behavior
• Bears should now perform close attacks correctly
• Improved attack checks for wolves, bears, boars and goats
• Reduced goat head damage
• Improved animal behavior pacing to reduce overly frequent resting actions
• Animals should no longer flee by turning toward threats
• Fixed cases where goats and boars could get stuck in attack aggro
• Fixed cases where animals could continue targeting dead players or animals
• Fixed an issue that could prevent animals from reacting to players
• Fixed cases where animals could be frightened by other animals that should not be seen as threats
• Fixed cases where animals could fail to detect players or other animals after their perception was reactivated

Animal Movement & Tracking Updates:

• Fixed cases where animals could get stuck after fleeing
• Fixed cases where animals could enter safe zones
• Fixed cases where animals could move toward invalid locations
• Fixed cases where inactive or distant animals could fail to find a valid ground location
• Improved animal movement speed setup
• Added new movement logic to help animals move closer to targets
• Fixed goat footprint trails not appearing
• Fixed cases where animals could collide with the player camera

Audio, Animation, & Performance Updates:

• Fixed cases where inactive or distant animals could still trigger sounds
• Added additional safeguards for animal sounds, including footsteps, to help prevent audio-related performance issues
• Adjusted wolf howl volume
• Added a flesh-cutting sound effect
• Fixed various animal animation issues
• Continued performance optimization work, including improvements to animal population performance
  

This is still an Alpha Playtest, so some behaviours will not be final. Flee behaviour, bait feeder interactions, animal population, and predator response are all areas we are continuing to test and improve.

CHANGES IN PREVIOUS PUBLIC ALPHA [JUNE 17TH]

• Animal population now updates throughout the in-game day, rather than only updating when day / night changes
• Bait feeders have been updated to work with the new population system, attracting existing animals or spawning a new animal if there are none around to ensure the player is rewarded for using them
• Further iteration on flee behaviour, which should reduce some stuck-animal cases
• Animals can now die correctly while moving between different behaviour states
• Fixed several animal death-flow issues, including cases where animals could appear dead but remain standing
• Dead prey animals now attract predators in a similar way to bait feeders, but they won't spawn new animals
• Fixed cases where animals could spawn in water
• Fixed cases where animals would run into water
• Continued performance optimization 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.

Please keep reporting issues, odd behaviour, performance problems, and anything that feels off while testing.

Free-roaming animals arrive in the full Into The Wild June Update on Monday, June 29th.

Thank you to everyone helping us bring free-roaming animals back to the Island.