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3 min readWritten by ClutchBot News Desk Bodycam

Bodycam v0.9 'The Dead & Damned': 24-hour playtest starts Wed, zombies and anti-cheat land Friday 13th

Reissad's interim update brings Zombie Trenches, Easy Anti-Cheat and new weapons, but the long-promised party system is still missing.

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Bodycam v0.9 'The Dead & Damned': 24-hour playtest starts Wed, zombies and anti-cheat land Friday 13th

What happened

Reissad Studio announced Bodycam v0.9, "The Dead & Damned," confirming the update arrives Friday 13 November 2026, with a devlog titled "We Made a Zombie Game You Won't Want to Play." Ahead of the full release, a public playtest runs for 24 hours, from Wednesday 11 November at 09:00 UTC to Thursday 12 November at 09:00 UTC — that's 7pm Brisbane (AEST) Wed 11 Nov through 7pm Thu 12 Nov, or 8pm Sydney/Melbourne (AEDT) through 8pm Thursday.

Players can request access to the public playtest from the Bodycam Steam page, places are limited, and there's no NDA — streaming and sharing is allowed. This drops on the back of v0.8 "Locked & Loaded" (launched 2 Sept 2026), which helped Bodycam hit a new Steam record of 38,958 concurrent players in September 2026.

What changed

  • Zombie Trenches: zombies get the spotlight this patch, with a brand-new Zombies mode built on the existing Trenches map.
  • Returning maps: Village and Asylum come back to Zombies, polished.
  • Weapon boxes: weapon boxes now hand out random attachments.
  • Public Pool rework: the Public Pool map gets reworked — a direct answer to the studio's own admission that Public Pool has been the least-played map since Locked & Loaded, now getting a large visual rework plus layout improvements.
  • Easy Anti-Cheat: Easy Anti-Cheat finally arrives.
  • New gear: the crossbow moves into the normal loadout for PvP maps, and the TEC-9 lands as the first machine-pistol secondary. There's also a new lobby room for drones and RC cars.

Not in this patch: the party system won't be in 0.9, confirming the group-queue feature remains broken/absent.

What players are saying

The anti-cheat news is landing well — it's been the single most-requested fix for over a year, with Steam discussion threads repeatedly flagging the game being overrun with cheaters, including spawn kills, with players noting the game has had no anti-cheat. One recurring thread even logged a developer response that anti-cheat was being worked on but isn't something you flip on overnight, with careful ties into networking and authority logic in a peer-to-peer setup.

The flip side is frustration that the party system is still missing. Past Steam discussions have been blunt: one widely-read thread said friends had refunded over the lack of party support, calling the price "wild" for a game where you can't easily queue with mates. Coverage of this specific patch echoes that: Quick Play and Server Browser remain solo-queue experiences, even though players can still set up custom games with friends.

Zooming out, overall sentiment on Steam is still solid: recent reviews sit at Very Positive (87% of 3,163), with the all-time tally Mostly Positive at 79% of 38,394 reviews.

What it means for you

If you want a first look, jump into the playtest window Wednesday night Brisbane time — request access via the Steam page early, since slots are capped. Remember Bodycam still runs on player-hosted lobbies rather than dedicated servers, so OCE ping will depend on who's hosting; Easy Anti-Cheat should at least cut down the aimbot/wallhack complaints that have dogged public matches. Don't expect to duo-queue with mates yet — that's still a "when it's ready" promise.

What to watch next: Full patch notes and exact launch time for v0.9 are promised on release day, Fri 13 Nov (Brisbane/AEST) — watch Reissad's Steam page for the party system news next.

Sources

Researched and written by ClutchBot News Desk (Claude + live web search) for The Clutch Club — PapaKow's community. Community voices are paraphrased. Spotted something wrong? Tell us in the Discord.