

Contagion
Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyPrices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.


01About Contagion
Contagion puts zombie survival horror into shifting rounds: randomization changes resources, objectives and routes as players escape, rescue civilians or hunt one another. Steam players rate it 75%% positive across 10,046 reviews. Released October 25, 2013.
Credits
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$2.992023-11-17 · Humble StoreBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Traditional Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Show 8 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
| Korean | Yes | Yes | — |
| Turkish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Ukrainian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-19
02Before you buy
Modes
The Steam PC listing includes single-player, multiplayer and co-op. Randomized rounds change resources, objectives and routes.
Language
English has full audio. Eleven supported interface languages are listed, including English, German, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese; subtitles are listed for them.
03Frequently asked questions
What modes are included?
Modes include escaping, extracting civilians and hunting other players, as well as Panic! and Flatline.
How do the zombies behave?
The description calls them slow-moving undead that can be put down with a headshot or enough hits.
What equipment is available?
The game describes over 28 equipment items, including firearms, melee weapons, explosives, support items and tools.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
Please note that this Early Access review is not a substitute for a comprehensive bug report. Contagion is the zombie game purists have been waiting for since they first cracked open "The Zombie Survival Guide". For me, that's about ten years. For ten years I've waded through a horde of zombie games. Nothing emulated the raw feeling of isolation and cold that a gunshot in the distance or a scream or absolute silence can bring. We're all familiar with Brooks' original canon for zombies. Only headshots kill them. Eat flesh until they can't. Only sensory organs that have not been decayed or destroyed work. A moan causes others to moan, and they are attracted to the sound like a foghorn in the night. I never felt like I would truly find the zombie game that emulated this canon so perfectly. First there was Dead Rising - a close contender - followed by Dead Space [which opened a whole new can of worms] and Dead Island, which underperformed in basically every aspect. Left 4 Dead left a hollow feeling, mowing down thousands of zombies in a few hours seemed not worthwhile. Even DayZ left a bitter taste with its focus on player interaction and intense PVP, zombies were a secondary addition to the game and in their state of bugginess and all-out failure to function were hardly a threat to be feared for all but the newest players. Finally, though, finally. From the ashes of Zombie Panic! Source comes a developer prepared to emulate and yet transform the genre. Erasing waypoints with Google Maps on a cell phone and slaughtering the idea of overpowered zombies by balancing their frailty with disguise and scarce ammo, this game is reaching for the stars. Contagion performs in ways I never thought I would see, genuinely. It strikes feelings of sudden and intense panic, a moan can send my heart pounding in my ears, praying it would be silent so I could hear which direction the zombie was coming from. A gunshot can bring hell's fury itself down on your head, while boarding up windows and doors can buy you time to escape. Zombies' interaction with the world largely seems to be directed by line of sight and various audio cues, which gives them a shambling and confused appearance. A slight trigger can send Zack coming at you, but a bullet in the wrong place can mean a bite, and a risk of infection. Incentivized by kill count and bragging rights, a human infected is unlikely to share this information with his teammates for fear of being shot on the spot. A group of humans prepared to fight off a horde of 50+ shambling corpses can easily be dissuaded by a misaligned headshot tearing off the jaw of a zombie and inspiring panic in the squad. A misplaced shotgun round can result in legless zombies crawling under the horde and into your lines. Brutality, free-for-all, and all out panic. All of it rings true of the first days of the Zombie apocalypse, and all of it brings a warm feeling of nostalgia to my heart, and hopeful eyes for the bright future where the Zombie genre isn't filled with crafting games, 8-bit indie ♥♥♥♥, and quick time events. Even the zombie player gameplay has merits. A helpfully designed "camouflage" button allows an inept player to disguise himself as he views his zombie in the third person and have control assumed by the AI. Moaning loudly can draw a horde, and in turn the moans of those zombies draw more, which can be lead to the human's hideouts and used to swarm them. A biting function has a high chance to infect humans, and watching your former counterparts murder each other for fear of infection in their hideout is rewarding in its own regard. I've never been so happy to realize a game was early access. After about 30-40 hours, I can easily see myself growing tired with this title and passing it into novelty, but it was well worth the 3$ spent. Call me nostalgia-blind, but there's so much potential content to see from these developers, and I'm very excited to be along for the ride. 18/10, buy this and buy it for all your friends. This game will make history, and if it doesn't, I'll eat my shoe on livestream.Show moreShow less
This is a draft review, I'll rewrite this word-hurricane later, treat it like a blueprint. The game is late by about 8 years in terms of graphics, animations, gameplay and just about anything else you could name. It costs about $20, but for that you get about 3 coop maps and... 3-4 PvP maps. That's it! The game modes do not differ greately, except the coop ones of which there are two and they get boring rather quickly. Maps do change, but the routes are easily remembered, there are about three variations for each coop map, but if you ask me an occaisonally open door that was closed before does not make much of a difference, the tasks are varied but like I said only change twice or thrice per map. But this isn't even the biggest problem. The worst flaw of the game is what is meant to be its selling point. The devs have made the multiplayer system so difficult and broken it is impossible to join your friends server (trust me I've spent 4 days trying every single solution on forums). The only way to do so is to download third-party programs like Hamachi and I have no intention to do that since I've had less problems joining in a 1999 System Shock 2. The devs are aware of this problem, but they don't want to fix it. Trust me, as I have spoken to them and they say they are denying any bit of constructive criticism. I think they are hinting at that "rent a server" feature instead. Pay-to-play? No thanks. And if you don't want a server and just want to play with your friends, be aware that numerous people will join as zombies 5 minutes before your escape in a 30 minute map and eat you and your friend alive, and they will pick your server out of about 500 empty ones available, yeah the community is nice too. (A link to the discussion: http://steamcommunity.com/app/238430/discussions/7/540743212111472871/) This game is in development hell, essentialy you are buying about 5%-10% of what is promised. For this price, there has to be something like 50% more weapons, a campaign mode, 15-20+ maps, a working multiplayer, less bland characters that only differ slightly in voice and hand textures. But more than that, it should be somewhat playable because the balance is broken hopelessly (I'm talking about coop, since nobody buys these games for PvP), three guys vs. three zombies is an impossibility. In fact, one zombie player against 5 survivors gives the zombie about 70% chance of winning, as I have never seen zombies lose unless it's near the very end of the map. The maps are confusing, the directions are seriously broken, people spend 30 minutes trying to fight off zombies looking for an escape truck just to find it half-way through the map in a random detour. "Realistic" zombie games were the talk of early 00's and many mods were made for a number of them, some were free and more complete than this. If it came out then as a mod, I'd download it and spend maybe two nights for fun, but to pay for something like that in 2014 - no thanks. The fact is, the game is hopelessly overpriced and late and devs need a reality check. It has no point and no outstanding feature, you begin to wonder as to what the actual point of makiing it was. It isn't realistic enough to be the Arma of zombie games, it's not arcade enough to be for ♥♥♥♥♥ and gigles like l4d, it doesn't have much content to brand it as something inbetween these two zombie extremes. My verdict - the game 's like a random bored zombie that won't even chase you after you poke it, you can just walk past. If you do not believe a single word I've said, look at the percentage of people that have got the easiest achievements for this game. It's in the decimals for most of them, because I'd bet this game is "enjoyed" mostly over LAN by devs and their friends, and anyone like myself who likes to buy random stuff and make reviews knowing even before the purchase what the game will probably be like anyway. A little edit: there is a positive review up on the site, that is more popular. It was not removed, although it is early access, unlike reviews by Mantis and other people which were outright banned. Although I might see the logic that it was perhaps, not entirely about the game and more about the attitude of the development team, they were stating an opinion and so should not be banned. I don't see the devs removing the positive Early-Access reviews, so this is hardly fair. P.S. A few months later, upon mentioning my review in another negative one focusing on developer attitude I got a friend request from the developer himself. ()Show moreShow less
Ok so- I own this game. I have owned it a while. I enjoy it. But there's a ton of people posting negative reviews for stupid reasons. Up to and including: - Shooting zombies is very ineffective unless it's the head (Yes someone actually posted this). I think too many people compare it to Left 4 dead and other similar games and it's a different experience. People also are complaining about the devs responses, when they leave up posts calling thier game outright trash, ect. ect. . I enjoy coop games, I really enjoyed SWAT 4, I enjoy Left 4 Dead, Payday, and I enjoy this. That being said here's a realistic pro / con list for you: Pro -Co oP is fun- You need to share ammo. You need to share weapons. Health kits are super rare and you have to arbitrate who they go to. You have to work together. -Immersion- Rage zombies were never my thing. Nothing against them but to me the slow shambling ones are the way it's done. If your a fan of oldschool zombie movies- There ya go. It's got that feel to it. Voice acting-A lot of work went into this. It's not stellar by any means but there are two radials with different sayings for most of them. Top that off the characters will be louder or quiet based on certain factors (If the person is crouching or havent done any movements yet - the voice of character will be quieter than usual. If character took a shot or someone near by shot - they will speak loud. They will also speak loud when they were running for quite long time or there is action going on). If someone goes down, they become a zombie and can call the horde and hunt down thier former friends. I always had a lot of fun with it and it helps with the immersion which is a big thing in games for me. -Modes- There are a fair number of modes for this game. I look at some of the games coming out nowadays like Evolve (Don't get me wrong I enjoy it, I play it, but it was too much for what it was) that are essentially one game mode stretched to thin. The same could be said about a lot of games, some would say it about this one, but at least they tried. I tested some of the other ones, none were as much fun as coop. Con -The graphics are dated- This isn't a deal breaker for me but it is for a lot of people "OMARGAWRD THUR GRUAFAX". -The Co-op is unintuitive- It's true, there's not going to be any Left 4 Dead highlighting of objectives. You have a cell phone that you check that tells you where to go / what to do. You have to actually figure it out for yourselfs, i.e. where the basement is, where the helipad (the roof) is, and so on. To the devs, this would really be my only gripe. Some things are easy to figure out, others can feel absurd. Play the police station and try finding keys the first time, you'll probably get the idea. I had friends drop this game just based on the fact they were tired of running around, sometimes dying because we couldn't find some objective. If you intend on playing coop, and new to the map- look up a guide of the map. You'll thank me. I'm not saying the Dev's should implement highlights, but something a little more informative with messages would vastly improve this game imho. -Not really a SinglePlayer Experience- The story will be the same regardless, nothing grandiose. Just the same mission or surviving alone. This game is meant to be played with friends. I have heard that there are griefers online, and people have complained about it in the reviews. There are griefers in any multiplayer experience. It's not the dev's fault. Seen it in Ark, Seen it in Payday, Seen it in Left 4 Dead, Seen it- You get the idea. Hell any survival game with limited resources is begging to be griefed. So- Play with friends if it bothers you, or find a good coop server. I have personally never had the issue of running into griefers on this as of yet, but have only played on online servers a handful of times. Those times I did, people were greedy with ammo, and weapons, but didn't grief. All this being said, I would reccommend this game. There's still some things that could be added that could improve it, but if you're a fan of old school zombie movies like I am, then get it. Maybe wait till it goes on sale if the price tag is too high for you, but worse case scenario - If you don't like it well good news everyone steam has a return policy now. But play it with friends. All games are more fun that way, especially this one.Show moreShow less
Originally I gave this game a positive review because of it's potential and it's survival horror elements/gameplay. My friends and I had a lot of fun playing this game even with the limited number of maps/overall content. However, I'm changing my review due to the communication between the developer and its community. The developer for this game cannot take constructive criticism. How these guys deal with this is awful. I'm not upset about the wait for the new content. I understand it's free which is great. I am upset that they deal with their customers so poorly. Pass on this game.Show moreShow less
I've played this game on and off and I feel like its time for a review after spending some of my time on this game. Summary: This is just your typical cliche zombie survival game where your basic objective is to survive (Duh!). You select from a handful of characters to decide who you want to be and go straight to business; shooting zombies and people. There are different modes in the game in which you can play: Escape, hunt, and extract. Escape: This is the primary mode that this game was probably built for. It is purely PvE where players come together to find a way out of a selected environment. There are different difficulties to test your skills in both individual and team gameplay. What I found really unique and interesting in this mode was that everytime you played it, it was always some what different every run. Your pathing to the ending of each map was usually different and this somewhat made the game mode fresh everytime. What I found to be a failure in this mode was that the ending of escape was always the same and my incentive to play again was minimal. There are no rewards for completing and it gets really repititive. Basically all you did was shoot zombies, find objectives, and get out. Another thing was how it could be absurdly difficult at times. Although this was also a reason as to why it was somewhat fun, a lot of the time you would find yourself back tracking to find missing objectives or paths to work your way to the end, all the while wasting ammo on zombies because you had no choice. Another thing was that players could turn into zombies if they were attacked or dead. I could see how dead players who turned to zombies could potentially create a left 4 dead PvP scene where teamwork is key, but the problem is that zombie players could single-handedly wipe out a whole team of players because thats just how strong and difficult a zombie player is to handle (I literally just walk in zig zags and no one could kill me and I would just kill them in like 5 hits). This adds to frustration of playing this mode as if looking for objectives while fighting AI zombies wasn't already a chore. My suggestion would to make this purely PvE and leave PvP for hunt and extract, which I will discuss about next. Hunt: If all you want to do is walk around and shoot people or be a zombies and kill people, this is the mode for you. It is purely PvP. Everyone starts out with a basic secondary weapon (handgun) and melee weapon and have to search for weapons that can be found in various areas across a map. While doing so, players will encounter eachother and kill eachother. But again, it can feel repetitive as the sole purpose of this mode is to just walk around killing eachother (Of if you like the classic camping you can do that too) till the round ends with only 1 survivor or the round times out. Because of how the mode is set up to end, players are basically encouraged to actually camp if they want to win. This can really ruin the fun as some people play it for the action and interactions between finding eachother. You could go AFK in a basement and win the round by doing literally nothing because while you decided to sit like a scared child, other people were actually playing the mode as how it was supposed to be played; by finding and killing eachother. You will find out yourself about how the community may react to you camping if you decide to play this game/mode. Extract: This mode is probably one of the least favorable modes in the game. What you do is work as a team to find AI survivors and rescue them to a safe point. Although this sounds potentially challenging or fun, it is again very boring and repititive (in my opinion, of course). There is no real goal in this mode because once you rescue the AIs, you are back to square one; Finding and saving AI's again. You will eventually find yourself leaving the game rooms as you die from zombies and ultimately boredom. Music/Sounds: What really shines, in my opinion, is the music and sounds of the game. It is very high quality and really fits the overall theme of the game. It creates an eerie feeling to the game when playing and is what really drew me into the game's atmosphere. Voice acting is great as well, although most of these characters are abit too grumpy and mad (For good reason probably). Graphics: The graphics in this game are good if not great. Theres really nothing bad to say about the graphics... Besides sometimes I would enter servers where the game was all choppy at times and looked like I was playing an 8-bit game with low FPS. Other than that, graphics meet basic/standard expectations. Weapons: There are plenty of guns/weapons in this game. Honestly, depending on which weapon you have, alot of them are pretty similar in terms of effectiveness. Although you'll probably find some guns to be a lot weaker and useless compared to others ( F****** colt), it isn't really an issue to the game. Characters: The handful of characters as I mentioned in the beginning of the review, all have the same value in the game. There is no OP or weak character, it is all preference of how you want to look. Sadly, I would have prefered to be able to customize my own character or let the characters available to have stats so that it would fit people's preferred playstyles. In this game's case, your best bet is to be the black guy (No racism intended) because he best blends into the night and camouflages very well in PvP. Conclusion: 6.5/10 Rating Ultimately, what really brought Contagion down is the repititiveness of the game. The replay value of this game is really low, as I have dropped and picked up this game on and off over the year, only playing it every few times a month when I was really bored. Content is slow to release and while there is a steam workshop for this game, there isn't much it has to offer because this game lacks strong popularity within the zombie fan community. You will find yourself picking up this game for about the first hour or so, and then immediatly dropping it if you have no friends to play with. Thanks if you actually read this long review. Although it seems like im not recommending this game at all, surely it is not the case. This game did have its great and fun values. But it only hit me ever so softly, and I feel that it can be fixed. Is it worth trying this game? Yes definitely, but get ready to drop it. Is it worth the money? No, I would recommend buying it on sale. TL;DR: This game can be fun, but gets boring and repititive too quickly to really be worth its costs. I would still recommend trying it though if you can get it at a low price.Show moreShow less
(Final Release) I do not value this game anywhere near $20 right now. The release of the Contagion SDK might change the amount of content available for this game, but right now it is seriously lacking. The description of the game on this store page just sugar coats and exaggerates everything. Initially the game itself is fun. It gets boring quickly with there only being a few maps total and even fewer co op maps. The game goes on sale for $5 sometimes, I recommend this game at that price (especially if you go into it with friends). Investigate and watch some gameplay before you take this negative review to heart, you could really like the game.Show moreShow less
At the time of writing this (11/2/2013 ), Contagion is still currently in beta form. With that being said....Contagion already outperforms most triple A title retail releases. With it's addictive game modes, dead on gameplay and rock solid servers, Contagion is already putting some life back into the into the online co-op survival horror genre laid out by classics such as Left4Dead and the Killing Floor. Running on an optimized Source engine Contagion's graphics are sharp, smooth and alive with death around every corner. From the lighting effects in the dark corridors to the reflection effects seen in mirrors, lakes and puddles the developers have created a world filled with atmosphere. Yet, the sound in Contagion is what will immediately draw you into it's world. Each echo, gunshot in the distance and glass under foot will immerse you into this adrenaline filled horror show. Each and every thing about Contagion screams instant classic! I have never written a review while a game was still in Alpha or Beta form but, the developers created an experience that I can't get enough of and I wanted to put any questions to rest as to whether or not you should purchase this now while in Beta or after the final release. Although I wouldn't consider this my final review, I will absolutely recommend Contagion to everyone here on the Steam platform. If you've never been part of a Beta release and the excitement that goes along with being a part of a successful title in the making or if you always wanted to say you were there from the beginning before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon before it became a household name.....This is your opportunity!!! I 100% recommend purchasing Contagion in Beta form or otherwise. I go as far to say you'd be crazy not to. Trust me as the title states this game is contagious!!! Contagion Beta (V2990) review 9.2/10!!! Buy this game!!!Show moreShow less
A clunky zombie survival horror game with extremely delayed patches and DLC that had been promised, with numerous developers leaving the company and with a manchild developer falsely banning people from the games steam forums for expressing discontent with the games current state and the development cycle. As for the game, it is dated visually, has extremely bad movement controls, has really bad gunplay, and allows for easily exploitable maps in which most people just camp in one spot. Also, the player counts at peak times are abysmally low (lower than 50 sometimes) Avoid like the plague.Show moreShow less
Joined a server Met a person called him friend as did he a player zombie bit him he told me to put him out of his pain I got sad as did he i took out my shotgun he said do it I shot him ... I found a grenade i attracted the horde and i pulled the pin and died 10,000/9,999 Would cry again.Show moreShow less
I have been a long term Contagion gamer so feel qualified to write a fairly unbiased review. TL;DR Each of the reviews you see below praising the game but critcising the developers are accurate. It is that simple. Also, team killing is rife which completely destroys the gameplay and forces individuals to use the easier non-TK servers which quickly become boring. The developers have also taken no action against the numerous trolls who use certain choke points in the levels to ensure that gamplay is stopped. The game community is almost completely extinct largely due to the developers shocking attitude to their customers. LR; When I first started playing Contagion last year the Developers were embroiled in a lengthy update process. The community was disnechfranchised including certain individuals who had supported via Kickstarter and were still waiting on rewards. I decided to let that slide and decide for myself. The gameplay is good with tense moments and very acceptable graphics using the CS engine. To the developers credit some of the levels are huge, the biggest in the Steam library by some estimates. Nice use of fire and shadow makes for interesting human versus zombie battles. Once killed a human player becomes a zombie and must attack and kill/turn the remaining human survivors. However this creates a unique dynamic because once killed you drop your weapons and ammo. Players naturally want certain weapons or more ammunition and team kill individuals to get it which forces the majority of the community to use non-TK servers which are far easier to beat because the zombies and objectives are easier to achieve with more abundant ammo. Zombies are blessed with the ability to track humans, summon NPC zombies and direct zombie hordes. Quite often the zombie players win if they are experienced and know how to ambush. However if the humans are experienced then becoming a zombie is chore because the humans bunch at choke points...due to the fact that once a zombie is killed a certain number of times they become a spectator to the game. So experienced players simply find an alley/corridor and wait. They kill zombie attackers over and over forced into the alley until they become spectators then continue with the objectives. The only way to win is hope that a new player is within the crowd and will make a mistake leading a gap in the team. Because of the dev attitude, the team killing and the trolling, the game's user base has dwindled and you will often see the same 10-20 people hopping between servers some of which alleviate their boredom through trolling the levels to make them uncompletable. Examples include stopping people from using critical elevators or preventing NPC characters from being rescued by leading them away from the exit zones. Unofrtunately the user base has also dwindled in part due to the shocking attitude of the developer Tatsur0. I had read numerous reviews on Steam and on the gaming press about his attitude to paying customers but disregarded them. However as the updates dragged out from weeks to months to over 9 months it was hard to accept his constant refutations to customers. In the end a bug-riddled update was issued with new maps but missing promised weapons, skins and game modes which are apparently "coming soon". The developer response on the forums is always "I promise nothing" and "Go play other games." People who criticised the developers were continually banned whilst trolls and team killers cannot be dealt with unless you supply video-evidence to the developers. During my supportive period I even wrote a lengthy strategy for the developers (I have launched several apps and work in App Development) about how to really engage the audience during updates and prevent users leaving. It was so well received some of the gamers even said I should be hired. The post was ignored with a response "We don't have time to do any of that stuff." I shrugged that off and continued to pour time into the forums and the game. My decision to exit the game came after Tatsur0 refused to acknowledge the fact that Windows 10 renders the game unplayable (no sound, stuttering). After I flagged this and asked how many users were planning to take advantage of the free Windows upgrade my topic was flagged as spam (under the heading "Not relevant to Contagion") and the response was "Users know we don't support Windows 10 so Valve handle refunds." I cannot in good faith recommend that new users devote any kind of time to a game whose community has almost disappeared despite being a pretty good game. I honestly hope the Developers learn how to deliver a better customer service experience to the community that keep them in business.Show moreShow less
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.
