Free-Roaming Animals Return in SCUM’s June Update
June 30, 2026
The Island’s ecosystem is starting to move again.
SCUM’s June Into the Wild update brings free-roaming land animals back to the world, changing how prisoners hunt, track, and survive in the wild.
To learn more about the work behind free-roaming animals, watch the latest SCUM Dev Diary:
Animals no longer appear through a separate hunting flow. They now move through the open world, shaped by biome populations, time of day, player distance, visibility, and Level of Detail [LoD] animal AI. A hunt can begin with movement on a distant ridge, turn into a careful approach through the treeline, and end with something else closing in on the carcass you left behind.
This isn’t the old animal system being switched back on, free-roaming animals were previously removed for performance reasons, so the team has rebuilt the wildlife system around SCUM as it exists today. The previous hunting minigame has also been removed, meaning prisoners now need to scout, follow, and hunt animals directly in the world around them.
The update also moves animal AI over to Unreal’s Behavior Tree framework, giving the team a stronger base for improving behaviors, tuning animal-specific encounters, and supporting more varied wildlife threats in future updates.
Alongside the return of free-roaming animals, June’s update also includes a limited-time SCUM 1.0 Anniversary Quest, Trophy Fish Wall Mounts, Improvised Cooking Recipes, Customisable Tombstones, along with new custom server settings, fixes, balance changes, and quality-of-life improvements.
Two new optional DLC packs, the Specialist Archer Pack and Specialist Scout Pack, are also available as part of the Into the Wild theme.