Contagion
Skip · Multiplayer · 2013
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $9.99.
- Length
- 21.9h
- Value
- $0.46/hr
- Reviews
- 73% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, 10 GB of storage. Windows only.
Contagion isn't your average Zombie Shooter but instead takes a more realistic and different approach to the popular genre with unique characters, environments, weapons, items, and a built in system that makes every round completely unpredictable with resources, objectives, and paths ever changing.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
It has never been cheaper than $2.49. That was February 2016. It has been discounted 92 times in the 13 years tracked here, typically at 60 percent off, with about 5 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 13 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 5 weeks.
Value puts it in the top 31 percent of the games it competes with. It is pricier than 70 percent of its genre. Killing Floor 2 ($29.99, scores 66) outscores it, and so does DayZ ($49.99, scores 52). Both sit among its closest neighbours.
62 from critics against 73 percent from players, and the player number comes from people who own the game.
Of the 800 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 17 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written December 2020 to September 2026. That is more refunded reviewers than 8 in 10 paid games this site has sampled to the same depth, and among the 490 games in its genre sampled this deeply, 119 have a larger share. The typical game sits near 5 in 1,000, so the score docks it. 5 of the 17 refunded reviewers were past Valve's two-hour window when they wrote the review. Inside the two-hour refund window, 51 percent of the 2,070 reviews written there were positive, against 73 percent overall, and those are 21 percent of everything written about it.
Deck Verified, so no launch options and no controller remapping before it runs.
The drop-off
32% start to <1% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
Players
27 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
this is a fun game and can ge t genuinely creepy well worth the low asking price
I used to absolutely love this game, and honestly, it's still good, but unfortunately the updates haven't improved it-they've mostly made it worse. For example, in the past you could only hear zombies when they were actually very close to you. Now you can often hear them constantly even when there aren't any nearby. In my opinion, this change is especially annoying. I know it's probably meant to make the atmosphere...
Honestly not a fan of how slow and unforgiving the gameplay is, the only thing i like about this game are it's environments and maps, they are beyond beautiful for 2013 source engine. Also, the netcode in this game is so broken that you'll spend most of your time troubleshooting setting up a lobby for your friends to join than actually playing the game. Even if you want to play with the bots they are beyond stupid...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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Contagion scores 35/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/238430/contagionThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 13, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.