The programming team is warming up their fingers and gearing up for this year's release! Starting with working on additional admin commands for private server owners and adding support for extra first-person vehicle animations. Foliage is also being further optimized, and new tooltips are being added for localization purposes. Additionally, player collisions are being modified in custom zones, and there are some new developments in the anti-cheat segment—but more on that when we can give out details, NDAs and that. It goes without saying that a significant effort has been invested in bug fixing as well.

As the entire team has been heavily engaged in overhauling the landscapes of the map, some bugs have naturally cropped up, so the team is now focused on polishing and fixing them.

The animation team is heavily involved with bug fixing. Not much to share from their end.

The hard surface team has been reworking the Kar 98 and finalizing the AKM/RPK rework, as well as the new Manchu bow. A second iteration of the DEagle skin has also been worked on, along with the textures, setup, and query mesh for the new Zündapp-inspired motorcycle.

The soft surface team has been working on clothing for the unreleased NPC characters currently in development.

Here's a sneak peek at the new bow weapon:

The sound team has been working on various bug fixes and new weapon sound effects.

The QA/Community team is doing what they do best—hunting cheaters, sifting through bug reports, and engaging with all of you.

The game designers are focused primarily on bug fixing.

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Now that the update has been out for more than a week, let's see if we can answer a fresh batch of questions in the Q&A section:

• Thank you for the kind wishes! :) As for the helicopters, there are no plans to implement them at the moment, but it’s not entirely off the table and might make its way into the game at some point.

• Glad to hear you're finding the game excellent! Regarding our anti-cheat system, already mentioned in the programming section. Rest assured, we'll do our best to mitigate the issue.

• The map is indeed vast, with a wide variety of locations to explore. However, we recognize that sometimes, especially if the server isn’t full of players, it can feel a bit empty. That’s why we’ve enabled the option for private server owners to modify their servers in ways that create custom zones to incentivize players to converge in specific regions, thereby increasing player interaction. We recommend checking out SCUM servers here[www.battlemetrics.com] and exploring the server recruitment subforum on our Steam page. We hope this helps you find a server that caters to your preference for greater player interaction.

• One of our recent hires is a UI designer, so we can confidently say that we're working on improvements in that area!

• The Christmas season is behind us, and we're gearing up for an update that will remove the theme. We're also preparing to include some fixes with that patch, so stay tuned for more information.

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See you next week!

Fratman