New shooter Gray Zone Warfare achieves sensational player numbers, but Steam reviews are scathing

Gray Zone Warfare appeared completely out of nowhere in Early Access to steal a march on Escape from Tarkov. But at the moment, the shooter is mainly making computers smoke

The world of hardcore shooters is more exciting than it has been for ages. Many critics are predicting the demise of Escape from Tarkov, which has been causing huge shitstorms all over the internet in recent days due to some tricky decisions. At the same time, there are various new contenders on the sidelines to wrest the crown from the shooter king.

One of these candidates is called Gray Zone Warfare, a modern military shooter that makes some pretty big claims on the box:

• Three competing military companies vie for supremacy on a gigantic Southeast Asian island.
• Up to 1,000 AI fighters will battle it out with 48 players – per server.
• Like in Tarkov, you have to bag loot and get to safety to return stronger in the next round.
• Around 150 quests will be available right from the Early Access launch.
• Everything takes place on a single gigantic map with different zones.

And then Gray Zone Warfare appeared out of nowhere! The Early Access servers went online on April 29, 2024, and you can already buy access to the game for 35 euros – and thousands and thousands of fans are taking advantage of the offer. For example,over 40,000 people are currently shooting their brains out at the same time – for a hardcore shooter, that’s an impressive number.

However, even early access can be a bittoo early.

Mostly negative Steam reviews

Gray Zone Warfare is currently making computers smoke. The Early Access version only runs moderately well even on high-end computers, with people in the mostly negative Steam reviews&nbspcomplaining about meagre frame rates of under 40 FPS with an RTX 3070 even on low settings. The game doesn’t run at all with older cards

Our author Dennis Zirkler only achieves 60 to 70 frames per second in quiet areas, even with an RTX 4090 and DLSS enabled. When he stares at a wall, the level sometimes rises to 100 FPS. But when do you stare at walls in shooters?

The devs are already responding and promise hotfixes soon to take care of various problems, including server lags, glitches, broken data and, and, and. In general, Gray Zone Warzone seems to be in a barely playable state – and an Early Access release needs at least some basis. We’ll keep you up to date on when and if the dust settles