There was a ripple of panic among Friday the 13th players today when it came to light that developer Illfonic is working on a new project, a "multiplayer first-person zombie shooter set in a post-apocalyptic world" called Dead Alliance. In a statement posted on Reddit, however, studio CEO Chuck Brungardt said that stories about the game being abandoned are "100 percent not true," and explained that Dead Alliance isn't actually a new game at all. 

"Most major and independent studios have multiple teams working on multiple projects at the same time. This is critical for the survival of the studio, especially with the ups and downs with the game industry," Brungardt wrote. "Dead Alliance was started way before Friday the 13th: The Game. It was a co-development by Psyop Games and IllFonic then titled Moving Hazard. Psyop Games released Moving Hazard to Steam Early Access well over a year ago and it gained interest from Maximum Games for a console port." 

The Moving Hazard/Dead Alliance team has always been separate from the Friday the 13th team, he said, and in fact the Friday the 13th team has grown from about 20 people internally to 30. "We also have opened a second office that sole purpose is to support development of Friday the 13th: The Game. In addition we are continuing to staff up more team members for continued support of the game," he wrote. "So we assure you, continued support for Friday the 13th: The Game has not been abandoned, in fact, it’s quite the opposite." 

We actually spoke with Moving Hazard lead writer Christian Cantamessa about the game at PAX South in January 2016, and it hit Early Access a few months later. It's gone now, of course, but Dead Alliance sounds reasonably similar to what Moving Hazard promised: It's a multiplayer FPS in which zombies can be turned against opposing players. It's available for pre-purchase now for $25/£20/€25 on Steam, and slated to launch (in full, not Early Access) on August 29. 

Friday the 13th did not have a particularly auspicious start for an online game. We actually liked it quite a bit, calling it "a gory game of hide-and-go-seek that’s fun with funny people" in our review, but it was plagued by serious server issues that kept an awful lot of people from taking part. Some problems remain, going by the state of the discussions on Steam, but the situation has apparently improved enough that developer Illfonic has decided that it's time to start trying to make up for it.

"We do want to make note that you are being heard and updates will continually be rolling in. We have a lot planned to continue this trend, but we hope this first one will be interesting to you as we move towards more and more for this game," the studio wrote.

As mentioned in the video above, a free content update coming June 20 adds a new "retro" model for Jason, two new costumes for each counselor, and doles out 13,000 Customization Points to all players. There's also a double XP weekend starting on June 23.

"Our thanks to the community for their support, their feedback, their concern and their suggestions. This has been a rocky release, to be frank. Our team is looking forward to the future to get more features, more content, more updates rolling at a quick pace and we hope you enjoy!" 

Just ahead of the weekend, Illfonic also rolled out a "quick stopgap" update to Friday the 13th that plugs a number of security holes, including "the perk selling issue that users have been running into." Full patch notes are below. 

Improvements 

• Steam matchmaking searches longer for lower pinged games.
• Various minor matchmaking optimizations made.
• Lobby countdown timer closes menus at the 3 second mark instead of when it starts.
• Warning beeps can now be heard from sub-menus.
• Added lots more environmental kill locations to all of the maps.
• Leaving a match while a party leader now prompts you to disband or take the party with you.
• Security updates to prevent account spoofing.
• Dynamic camera and character animation improvements.
• Added an option for controlling the PTT sound.
• Increased XP penalty of team killing fellow counselors to -1,000XP from -200XP.

Fixes

• Fixed several exploit locations on all maps.
• Fixed Steam party members not following the party leader.
• Fixed Steam party main menu voice stuttering.
• Fixed Jason getting stuck in the grab pose if a grabbed counselor disconnects while being pulled out of a car.
• Fixed an issue with block detection on boat seats.
• Fixed some counselor vehicle interactions not being blocked while in a context kill.
• Fixed some floating items on item swap and with traps.
• Fixed the Shotgun sometimes floating after use.
• Fixed an issue with tracking total Jason kills.
• Fixed multiple achievement related bugs.
• Fixed windows sometimes displaying the wrong open/close position on listen servers.
• Fixed an issue where sprint was canceling fear animations & some stances.
• Fixed some dynamic camera issues when interpolating from a kill back to the player.
• Fixed Jason being able to morph into the boat and get shoved out of the map.
• Fixed a case where spectators would not hear alive players.
• Fixed session presence not always updating immediately to point at your game session (for invites) after you leave a party session.
• Fixed some game server specific crashes.
• Fixed the game sitting for the duration of the outro when no outro is played.
• Fixed the scoreboard staying on the screen when the end match menu opens.
• Locking the end match scoreboard on-screen.
• Fixed defaults not always functioning in Video Settings.
• Made the Gamma slider easier to use with a gamepad.
• Fixed a case where a player's mute state may not be sent to the server after loading the map.
• Fixed character placement issue when getting out of a tent.
• Fixed character placement issue when ejected from a car and your door is blocked.
• Fixed being able to use other items while using the sweater.
• Fixed some exploits with trap placement.
• Fixed multiple crouch exploits.
• Fixed multiple fireplace kill interaction distances.
• Fixed multiple cases of Jason being struck and flying off the map.
• Fixed multiple interaction lock bugs.
• Optimized Steam P2P lobby tag updates, dedicated server tag space usage.