Deadrop snapshot’s minimum specs are completely ridiculous

The minimum required specs for the Deadrop snapshot, a super-early preview of Herschel “Dr DisRespect” Beahm IV’s battle royale, call for an absolute monster of a gaming PC.

Dr Disrespect turned heads when he announced his game development studio, but the required specs for its very first release are breaking necks. The required computer specs for Deadrop are incredibly demanding even for a cutting-edge AAA game. Here’s what Midnight Society expects of its consumers and if these specs will change before the final release.

The released requirements are for a “snapshot“ of Project Moon with a very limited amount of content. Even though it’s just a small piece of the game, it will still require an extremely powerful gaming computer.

• Windows 10
• 4.2 GHz Intel i7-7700k
• 32 GB Ram
• 20 GB available HDD space
• Nvidia GTX 1080

Windows 10
4.2 GHz i7-7700k
32 GB RAM
20 GB available HDD space
NVIDIA GTX 1080

— Midnight Society (@12am) July 28, 2022

This is well above the average gaming computer. An i7-7700k is among the top gaming CPUs on the market, currently selling for over $400. A GTX 1080 is a slightly smaller ask, but still a massive hurdle to clear. The most standout stat is 32 gigabytes of RAM. 16 GB has become the new standard in 2022, but requiring twice that is bold even for a cutting-edge battle royale.

Why are the required specs for Deadrop so high?

Those familiar with the Deadrop snapshot can confirm that it’s barely even enough to be called a game, but it also requires a supercomputer to run effectively. There are several reasons for this.

The first is that the demo, small as it may be, is very graphically intensive. The warehouse is full of highly detailed models with custom assets. While the content itself is scarce, all of it looks fantastic. But other modern games look just as good without requiring a Pixar animation station to render. 

With that in mind, Deadrop is a work in progress that has just barely developed into a playable demo. The first Deadrop snapshot is much less polished or optimized than gamers are used to, leading to very high required specs. Midnight Society has probably put very little effort into optimizing performance at this very early stage of development.

This downloadable version is simply a very basic tech demo to show that the game exists. For most game studios, these early tests are kept in-house for only the developers to see. As the game is further established, the devs will put more time and effort into making it run smoothly.

In fact, Deadrop being able to run on less-than-ideal specs may be required for it to gain popularity. Big multiplayer shooters rely on a massive pool of players to make matches from. Only accepting gamers with thousands of dollars in hardware would slash the potential audience. It’s safe to expect lower requirements as development on Deadrop progresses.