Project Zomboid — Build 42 Multiplayer

For Build 42 of Project Zomboid we undertook a significant rework of the game's multiplayer systems in partnership with The Indie Stone.

The core challenge was cheating: the existing architecture stored player inventory client-side, making it trivial for malicious players to spawn items and undermine the survival experience for everyone on the server. Our solution moved all inventory state to the server, so every item transaction is validated and authorised server-side before being applied.

This required reworking a large portion of the game's item, container, and crafting subsystems — a non-trivial task in a codebase of this maturity and complexity. The result is a fundamentally fairer multiplayer environment and a solid foundation for future online features in Build 42 and beyond.