The Dead We Knew Early Access: Price, PS5 and Whether to Buy

Is The Dead We Knew on PS5 or Xbox?

No. Steam lists Windows only (no Mac, no Linux either). Press coverage in August already noted that only a PC version was confirmed, and an October rundown found no Game Pass listing. If you play on console, there's nothing to wait for yet, because the studio hasn't promised a port.

On PC, the bar isn't low. The minimum spec asks for a GTX 1070 and 12 GB of RAM, and the recommended spec doubles the memory.

The store page lists no processor at all, which is an odd gap for a game this heavy. English has full voice audio; twelve more languages, including Japanese, Korean and Turkish, get text.

The Dead We Knew price: what the studio has said

The game went on sale at $22.50 in the US store, with a 15% introductory offer that brings it to $19.12 until November 5. Before launch MAY19 never named a figure; back in July it told Inven Global the price "will be announced at a later date," and the store page showed none until the game unlocked.

What it has committed to is the direction. The Early Access answers on the Steam page say the studio plans "to increase the price" over the course of Early Access as content lands, and that it will announce each change in advance. So $22.50 is the floor for the regular price, not a sale figure that will come back around.

Day-one Steam reviews: Very Negative

The studio's "out now" post went up on Steam at 17:04 UTC on October 22. About three hours earlier, MAY19 had posted an apology for "not being here to respond to your discussions and questions sooner" and promised to follow the forums from now on.

Players weren't won over. When we checked at 02:10 UTC on October 23, the store showed 306 reviews and Steam's Very Negative label. The review most players voted helpful, from someone with 0.2 hours on record, is headed "I Really Wanted to Love This Game. The Game Had Other Plans." Another player, with 1.1 hours, listed what was missing: "There's no map, no marker to show where you died so you can retrieve your belongings," and "You can't punch, there's no melee combat."

Not everyone agrees. One of the few positive reviews, from a player with 2.7 hours, argues that a decent handful of the negative ones are "blown out of proportion" or "simply not true." It's one voice against a heavy majority, though. Of the ten reviews Steam ranked most helpful, nine were negative, and every one of those nine came from a player with 1.1 hours or less on record.

What's in the Early Access build, and what isn't

The studio calls the build "fully playable" and plans to stay in Early Access for about a year. Per the store page, these are in on day one:

• Base building. Start with a cabin and grow it into a bigger, fortified base.
• Survival meters. Hunger, thirst and energy, plus hunting deer, cooking over a fire and growing vegetables such as tomatoes.
• Weather that bites back. A 24-hour day and night cycle, wind and rain, and fog that makes zombies more aggressive when visibility drops.
• Water. You can swim, and boats get you across to other parts of the map.
• Co-op for up to four, or solo.

Screenshot: Steam store page

The planned list tells you what's missing: new weapon types, fishing, new settlements and vehicles. That last one matters if you watched the gameplay trailer. At 1:24 a pickup truck sits parked in a town, but driving is on the to-do list, not in the build.

Screenshot: Steam store page

What the trailers show

The official gameplay trailer on Steam runs 2:44, and it's mostly the loop the store page describes. At 0:28 the survivor draws a bow in a pine forest. At 0:36 he has a pistol out on a bridge while a crowd of zombies closes in, and two seconds later he's at the railing above the water. From 2:04 a flashlight beam is the only light in a pitch-dark house as he opens cupboards, and at 2:24 the camera follows a swimmer toward a raft with a sail beside a log wall.

The studio's own YouTube teaser is shorter and hits the same beats: zombies on a road at 0:14, a swim up to a log palisade at 0:22, and a finished base in a forest clearing at 0:36.

Why survival fans are wary

The date moved more than once. In July, MAY19 announced an August release, per Inven Global; NoobFeed later reported August 24, and by mid-August GamingBible had September 17. The Steam post confirming October 22 only went up on October 13, four days after the studio thanked players for 250,000 wishlists.

Screenshot: Steam store page

The Steam forum has been suspicious since summer. A July thread titled "Incompetance or a scam? Developers need to chime in." pointed at an X account with 11 followers and a broken Discord link. One reply wrote: "I hope this isn't the people behind Fntastic (The Day Before) under a new name." Another player said they'd follow the game "but no way I'm buying it at launch, it just smells so fishy."

None of that was proof of anything. It was a quiet studio with a good-looking trailer and not much else in public. But it explains the mood going into launch day.

Our take

Wait. A Very Negative score after one night isn't a verdict on where the game ends up a year from now, but it's the clearest signal you'll get this week, and the complaints we read go past launch bugs to basics: no map, no melee, no death marker. If your group is set on trying it anyway, Steam refunds any game you've played for under two hours if you ask within 14 days, so play it inside that window instead of trusting the trailer. Everyone else should wait for the first patch notes and see whether MAY19 keeps its promise to answer the forums. Our Early Access games worth buying list tracks which launches earned a recommendation; for zombie co-op that's already proven, start with the No More Room in Hell 2 beginner guide, and our Next Fest survival demos roundup has five you can try for free.

How we checked this

We haven't played The Dead We Knew. On October 22, 2026, before it unlocked, we read the Steam store page and its Early Access answers, the studio's Steam posts, earlier press coverage for the date history, the Steam forum and Steam's refund policy, and stepped through the Steam gameplay trailer and the official YouTube teaser for the timestamps above. At 02:10 UTC on October 23 we re-read the store page for the launch price and review score, read the ten reviews Steam ranked most helpful, and read the studio's two launch-day posts.

References

1. THE DEAD WE KNEW: Open World Survival on Steam, Steam
2. 250,000+ wishlists post, launch date post, launch-day apology and "out now" post, MAY19 STUDIO on Steam
3. THE DEAD WE KNEW Teaser 2, The Dead We Knew on YouTube
4. Humans More Dangerous Than Zombies, Inven Global
5. Steam Refunds policy, Valve