Be still my beating heart; State of Decay was a cult-like classic zombie survival, tasking players with building a community, completing objectives, and searching for resources all under heavy zombie presence. The DLC’s weren’t particularly impressive, and many fans anxiously awaited State of Decay 2 with its promised cooperative mode.
Then the developers, Undead Labs, announced that it was only coming to the Microsoft Store, and not Steam. Still, some held hope that the Microsoft store would be more operational than noticed in the past, and many users attempted to play State of Decay 2 multiplayer only to be foiled by Microsoft’s bizarre kernel checks and anti-piracy measures.
These measures didn’t stop pirates from playing the game; they only stopped gamers who paid for the title from being able to play with each other. Users who were forced to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7, and then attempted to cancel that upgrade when they saw it occurring, were particularly stuck in the mud with the title, as no amount of restoring kernels could make it playable.
Players were directed to attempting Teredo tunneling, system restores, reinstalling Windows, and a plethora of other fixes that ultimately left many gamers out in the cold, facing the undead hordes by themselves. Even gamers with computer science degrees found themselves spending upwards of twenty hours attempting to simply play with their friends, and ultimately gave up, spending their time and money elsewhere.
So the idea that State of Decay 2 is coming to the Steam platform is exciting for many, as the game may actually be in a cooperatively playable state. The game has been out since May 22nd, 2018, and it’s plausible that it may actually now be found in a playable state, infinitely more so being that it should be using Steam’s protection, rather than Microsoft’s.
While the level of generally ‘jankiness’ may still very well be found in State of Decay 2, it’s almost expected and welcomed at this point. The original game was prone to bizarre issues that cropped up when interacting with the game world; never stopping progress, merely raising an eyebrow of consumers as their hero fell out of a window yet again.
In State of Decay 2‘s launch on the Microsoft Store, many of the soft bugs were still readily seen in single-player. From not being able to pick up an item unless positioned perfectly above the item, causing heroes to run in circles attempting to get the accurate hitbox for the item, to running around vehicles awaiting the entry prompt, these soft bugs were found in droves.
It remains to be seen how many of these bugs have been fixed, and what Undead Labs are currently working on as the Steam release comes near.
