Sometimes a game developer’s best intentions pave the road straight to disaster. That’s exactly what happened with Squad, the hardcore tactical military shooter that spent years building a dedicated community around realistic teamwork-focused combat. In September 2023, developer Offworld Industries rolled out the Infantry Combat Overhaul, a massive update designed to make the game more authentic and discourage lone wolf players. The result? A catastrophic player backlash that sent Steam reviews crashing from Very Positive to Mixed, drove away longtime fans, and left the studio publicly admitting that trust has been shaken.
What the Infantry Combat Overhaul Changed
The ICO fundamentally transformed how Squad played at its most basic level. Running would now throw off your aim dramatically, forcing players into slower, more deliberate movement. A new weapon stability mechanic made shooting on the move nearly impossible, with guns bouncing wildly if you hadn’t stopped and steadied yourself first. Suppression effects became significantly more punishing, blurring your screen and destroying accuracy when enemies fired near you. Picture-in-picture optics replaced the previous zoom-based scopes, adding visual realism but tanking performance on many systems.
The overhaul also introduced stamina penalties that affected everything from how fast you could raise your weapon to how steady you could hold it after sprinting. Machine guns and automatic rifles received particularly harsh treatment, with recoil patterns that made them feel comically unusable when moving or firing from non-bipoded positions. Even weapons like the G3 and FAL became so punishing that players joked about their exaggerated bounce. The entire update aimed to slow gameplay down, prevent Rambo behavior, and force players to hunker in defensive positions rather than aggressively pushing objectives.
The Community Explodes
Player reaction was swift and brutal. One Reddit user with 175 hours in the game returned after the ICO and described the experience as quite disappointing, saying the suppression mechanics felt excessively strong and aiming at targets became frustratingly difficult with reduced control. He didn’t plan on returning anytime soon. That sentiment echoed across forums, Discord servers, and Steam reviews as players who loved Squad’s previous balance between accessibility and realism found themselves dealing with something that felt broken rather than improved.
The competitive Squad scene revolted almost immediately, with tournament players and longtime veterans organizing campaigns to leave negative Steam reviews. Some critics argued the changes transformed players from feeling like competent soldiers into cowering wrecks yearning for their mothers in trenches. Others pointed out that while the ICO successfully made solo play nearly impossible, it also made the game feel sluggish and unresponsive in ways that killed the fun factor. Even players who supported the overall concept admitted the execution went too far, creating mechanics that punished everyone rather than just discouraging certain playstyles.
The Timing Couldn’t Be Worse
Just as the community was dealing with controversial gameplay changes, Offworld compounded the problem by transitioning Squad from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 in September 2025. The engine upgrade introduced a considerable number of bugs, glitches, and devastating performance issues that remain partially unresolved months later. Players complained about optimization nightmares, broken in-game experiences, and technical problems that made the game nearly unplayable for some users. The combination of controversial gameplay changes and technical disasters created a perfect storm of player frustration.
What Offworld Got Wrong
Beyond the specific mechanical changes, Offworld made critical strategic errors in how it handled the ICO rollout. The studio conducted playtests before launch, but multiple players who participated said those tests were complete disasters, with feedback warning that the changes went too far. Despite this input, Offworld pushed ahead with implementations that made weapons even bouncier and sway even more pronounced than in earlier test versions. Nobody seemed sure which group was providing the feedback that led developers to continue in that direction, but it clearly wasn’t the right choice.
Communication breakdowns made everything worse. Players felt their feedback was ignored, playtests were disregarded, and updates were rushed out without proper polish or consideration for how they’d affect the core experience. Veteran players felt alienated and disrespected, while newer players struggled to navigate a confusing and broken experience that didn’t match the game they’d researched before purchasing. The studio’s lack of transparency throughout the process destroyed goodwill that had taken years to build.
The Developer Finally Admits Failure
In November 2025, after months of deteriorating community relations and plummeting Steam ratings, Offworld Industries published a remarkably candid statement acknowledging its failures. Dustin SgtRoss Ross, who formerly served as an executive focused on Squad, announced he was now leading a Community Development Team specifically created to listen to and implement player feedback. His message didn’t mince words, stating plainly that trust has been shaken, and that’s on us.
Executive producer Peter Maurice took over guiding the game’s overall development, admitting the studio had lost sight of Squad’s core: its passionate community. The developer acknowledged that players were right to hold them accountable for ignoring feedback, rushing updates, and allowing issues to persist without adequate responses. Offworld promised a new development strategy promoting transparency and collaboration, with regular smaller meaningful updates rather than massive controversial overhauls dropped without warning.
The Plan to Fix It
Offworld’s recovery roadmap includes immediate stability and performance fixes to address the technical disasters created by the Unreal Engine 5 transition. Vehicle combat is receiving particular attention with steering, handling, and braking updates rolling out in stages. More significantly, the studio announced plans to overhaul the Infantry Combat Overhaul itself, acknowledging that the changes went too far and need reworking to find better balance between realism and playability.
The studio launched player surveys to gather structured feedback and promised to involve the community in testing future changes before they hit live servers. Whether these commitments represent genuine reform or empty promises remains to be seen. Many players have adopted a wait-and-see attitude, burned too many times to trust developer statements without seeing concrete improvements in the game itself.
Lessons Nobody Seems to Learn
Squad’s disaster joins a long list of games that shot themselves in the foot by dramatically changing core mechanics without properly gauging community reaction. The pattern repeats endlessly across the industry: a developer decides their vision is more important than player preferences, pushes through controversial changes despite warning signs, then scrambles to repair relationships after the damage is done. Sometimes games recover from these self-inflicted wounds. Often they don’t, especially when alternatives exist that offer similar experiences without the drama.
In Squad’s case, the irony cuts deep. The Infantry Combat Overhaul was specifically designed to attract new players by creating more structured, team-focused gameplay that wouldn’t overwhelm newcomers with veteran lone wolves dominating servers. Instead, it drove away existing players who kept servers populated and created an experience so clunky that newcomers bounced off even harder than before. The attempt to solve one problem created three new ones, each worse than the original issue.
FAQs
What is the Squad Infantry Combat Overhaul?
The ICO was a massive gameplay update released in September 2023 that fundamentally changed how combat works in Squad. It introduced weapon stability mechanics, made shooting while moving nearly impossible, increased suppression effects, added picture-in-picture optics, and generally slowed down gameplay to discourage lone wolf playstyles and encourage teamwork.
Why did players hate the Infantry Combat Overhaul?
Players felt the changes went too far, making the game feel sluggish, unresponsive, and frustrating rather than more realistic. Weapons became excessively bouncy, suppression effects were too punishing, and the overall experience shifted from engaging tactical combat to tedious trench cowering. Many longtime players said it destroyed what made Squad fun.
What happened to Squad’s Steam reviews?
Squad maintained a Very Positive overall rating on Steam for years based on its strong community and engaging gameplay. After the ICO and Unreal Engine 5 transition, recent reviews plummeted to Mixed as frustrated players organized campaigns to leave negative feedback warning potential buyers about the game’s current state.
Did Offworld test the ICO before release?
Yes. Offworld conducted multiple playtests before launching the ICO, but many participants said the tests were disasters with feedback warning the changes were too extreme. Despite this input, the studio pushed ahead and even made some mechanics more punishing than they were in test versions.
What is Offworld doing to fix Squad?
The developer publicly admitted breaking player trust and announced a new community-first development strategy. This includes creating a Community Development Team to gather feedback, promising smaller regular updates, launching player surveys, and planning to overhaul the Infantry Combat Overhaul itself to better balance realism with playability.
When did Squad transition to Unreal Engine 5?
Squad moved from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 in September 2025. The transition introduced numerous bugs, performance issues, and optimization problems that compounded the frustration players already felt about the ICO gameplay changes.
Will Squad remove the Infantry Combat Overhaul?
Offworld hasn’t announced plans to completely remove the ICO. Instead, they’re planning to overhaul it, suggesting they’ll keep some elements while reworking others to address player complaints. A complete removal would essentially mean admitting the entire project was a mistake.
Can Squad recover from this controversy?
It depends on whether Offworld can deliver on its promises of improved communication, better testing, and meaningful gameplay adjustments that address player concerns. The success of the recovery will be measured by whether Steam reviews improve and whether the player base stabilizes or continues shrinking.
Conclusion
Squad’s Infantry Combat Overhaul stands as a cautionary tale about the dangers of developers losing touch with their communities. Offworld Industries had a successful hardcore tactical shooter with a passionate player base that understood and appreciated what made the game special. By implementing sweeping changes that fundamentally altered the core experience, ignoring feedback from playtests, and compounding gameplay controversies with technical disasters from an engine transition, the studio managed to alienate veterans and confuse newcomers simultaneously. The public admission that trust has been shaken represents a rare moment of developer candor in an industry that typically doubles down on bad decisions. Whether Offworld can translate that acknowledgment into meaningful action remains the critical question. The roadmap promises everything players want to hear: community involvement, transparency, regular updates, and gameplay adjustments that address specific complaints. But promises are cheap, and Squad’s community has learned not to trust words over actions. The next few months will determine if this story becomes one of redemption where a developer learned from mistakes and rebuilt relationships, or another cautionary tale about a game that shot itself in the foot and couldn’t stop the bleeding. For now, Squad exists in limbo, neither dead nor thriving, waiting to see if its developers can deliver on their commitments or if the damage already done proves irreparable.