Regarding PZmap
Hi all,
I just wanted to put something out as there's clearly been quite an unexpected change. I'm quite limited on what I can say so I can't really speak on specifics, however, unfortunately The Indie Stone's management has decided that they no longer wish to support the interactive map in an official manner, and have asked me to remove it from their servers.
I will be working to make the map available as a community resource again as soon as possible. This decision has come as a shock to myself as much as I'm sure it has come to you. I apologize for the inconvenience, and ask for your patient and kindness to myself, and the other Wiki editors while we come up with a sustainable solution.
Regrettably,
- Calvy
Edit: Please don't DDOS me Too late yall fucked my home network. Here's a drive link instead.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IyreJF8MgdkovyGqUk4cr3wy8uB8aiCC/view?usp=sharing
Comments Section
I will donate if you need funds for hosting.
I appreciate that. To be completely honest. Maybe too much so. I'd rather take the money of a company and I hope I have shown enough good faith that people know I will do my best to integrate it in a non-intrusive capacity
Is there any dynamic server-side storage involved in this? If it is entirely within the browser, I'm wondering if GitHub Pages would be a viable option.
Edit: I see you've said that it's completely client-side. Would you be interested in putting it up via GitHub?
Oh no! I really liked the map. Hope it gets back soon. Any idea how long? I am such a noob without the map XD
Such a shame. Loved this map and it is a lifesave. Hope you're feeling okay over it?
I was bummed that the fancy Project Zomboid B42 map was down, so I set up my own in Cloudflare R2 + Workers today
Enjoy! https://fanmap42.com
First time I think PZ team made an actual absolute dogshit water decision. Kind of genuinely pissed.
Can you guys not work on literally anything else? Anything at all? You have to take away one of the ONLY reasons the map is currently playable for a lot of people?
Maybe next time wait to wipe the tool we need until AFTER you implement your own site, TIS. This makes you look really, really shitty to every casual player who learns about it and used the map. Including me.
Genuinely the type of spit in the mouth that makes a 1.5k hour player wanna uninstall and get their money back. Like it's such a stupid little decision, but really? You're gonna disable one of the few unofficial guides we actually need for your jank Alpha game? Be so fucking for real devs.
If you keep spitting in the mouth of your biggest supporters, INCLUDING PEOPLE WHO PUT IN DAYS AND WEEKS OF LABOR, UNOFFICIALLY FOR YOUR GAME, you're not gonna have anyone left when you come out of Alpha- if you ever do.
These aren't the issues you should be dealing with. There's places you get hard locked into due to ladders not being implemented. The foraging/primitive survival mechanic is SO oversaturated and complicated that you'll die ten times before you find enough sticks or rocks to make a tent or fire or a crude knife... And that's if you even have the SKILL to FIGURE IT OUT! Simple crafting recipes are hard locked behind skills you can barely train out in the forest and RECIPES YOU CAN'T EVEN OBTAIN.
But, no, yeah. Let's remove arguably the BIGGEST unofficial help to the players, old and new. Excellent ideas as always, TIS.
Edit: this subreddit is so fucking stupid and keeps replying to my posts with completely unrelated shit.
Please, for the third time, STOP. (if there's a way a mod could just straight up lock my comments so people can't reply to them- I would be so thankful. You people are just so off topic and I'm tired of the peanut gallery being unhelpful and in general just fucking rude back to me just for having a not so nice opinion about having having MANY, MANY PROBLEMS WITH A GAME IVE OWNED FOR FIVE YEARS.)
Seriously? This is ridiculous?!? I love the map!! It is on my second screen the entire time I play!
Edit: Someone else made a petition: https://c.org/QqC8fx7PzQ
I posted on the official forums: https://theindiestone.com/forums/topic/98803-please-bring-back-the-interactive-map/
Everyone please tell TIS we want the map back!
Just for visibility - I also keep this up on my 2nd screen. TIS might not realize how important this actually is to players, but I don't know how they would make this decision without knowing the traffic metrics, either.
If anything it is going to get people riled up when TIS is already prone to scrutiny. I would rather them have been transparent about this than leave people guessing. If there are good reasons then say that, but otherwise you leave the mob to speculate.
The only possible reason for this is they want to release their own version. If that's so then they're already too late in saying so let alone making it available. Wiping a tool that I would bet the majority of the playerbase uses whenever they play is pretty senseless.
If that's so, the way to do it would have been to deploy their own instance somewhere else, test it out, then point the DSN record of map.projectzomboid.com to the new instance. Then they can pull the plug on the old one and there is no downtime at all. What a mess
imo even if they wanted to make their own they could just oh idk offer to hire/buy/takeover on the one that's already got 99% of the work done.
just seems like a very odd choice on their part.
When it comes to this they don't have to do any of those options. It is their i.p. and making a interactive map regarding someone else i.p. is a labor of love and subject to this exact situation.
I agree it is odd as its may change some opinion of the studio, but the game should remain unharmed.
What a stupid decision from TIS. The interactive map has been a hell of a staple for players for years.
Thank you for working so hard on it though dude. Hope you’re holding up okay after having the rug pulled from under you like that. You’ve got a huge community of supporters here!
Hey, I'm willing to provide hosting for this. I have a dedicated server from Hetzner. Send a dm if you're interested.
I've been hosting neglected internet projects for years already, so I have some experience.
For reference:
TerraFirmaCraft for the last many years
build servers for many Minecraft mods before gitlab's CI was free
CurseMeta 10M monthly users, it was a dependency for many modded Minecraft launchers for a while to enable the installation of Curse modpacks
TIS can't do a major release without some major fumble. AI slop art last release, dropping community map immediately after adopting it this one. Can't wait to see how they shoot themselves in the foot next time.
WTF, insane what about that blogpost from july 9th that sure means alot a month later i guess. I cannot believe they would do this and not come out with a statement and have you under restrictions which adds to the confusion.
Thank you for all your work Calvy!
This was really stupid. Used that all the time when I was at work to just check out and plan routes. Blizzard Entertainment level decision right here. Super "corporate."
I thought it was getting DDOSD again, was playing with it earlier today and it just went whilst I was looking at it, got real confused and only found this post a few mins ago, crazy work from TIS
I wonder if they're aware how often people use this. I don't know anyone who plays PZ without this open.
The only thing that makes sense is that they plan on hosting it themselves, right?
Didnt the devs (and especially lead designer) recently comment on collaborations with PZmap as well as all the cool things it can do now?
Why would it be taken offline?
Yes. The map update was announced on July 9th in this blog post:
https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2026/07/next-steps-2/
No idea why it would be gone not even a month later.
Damn, not even a month after they showed appreciation to the community by hiring map modders for the glow-up.
That fact made me super excited for the game’s future, but now I’m not sure they’re as supportive of community projects as I thought.
What an odd way for TIS to go about it. Even if you don't want to officially support it anymore, why not have a grace period? Allow some time to migrate it to new server infrastructure, set up a redirect.. Seems like bad marketing for no good reason.
Not even a month from announcing the update to the site AND marking it as "Official" and they dropped it? The heck TIS?
dude, I thought there was a problem with my computer first. the site has always been open as 2 tabs. I was very sad when I saw that they were gone. I've even spent more time on that site than on the actual game. Thanks for everything, you're a good person. I hope it returns in a better and more beautiful way.
What??? I haven’t even had a chance to play stable yet! I was so excited to get home and start planning for my husband and I’s first run! I can’t do that without the map!!? What’s haaaappening
600hrs here, I stuck to the game only after I learned about the online map and therefore how beautiful, big and detailed, now more then ever, the map is.
This is the first decision that did go bad with me regarding TIS...
And don't try to fkn blame the map bro, even IF there would be an issue with him/his work, do a proper statement not this omnibus bs
We're get that you guys are humans, and there comes flaws with it, but this is not the way.
Coming from Tarkov, TIS was always my go to for an example of an good game by good devs
Hope this gets clarified
from the devs on Steam discussion page about the loss of the map
"CaptainBinky [developer]
I cannot get into specifics, but suffice to say this is not the preferred outcome from anyone's perspective.
"CaptainBinky [developer]
There's nothing sinister, it's just getting into specifics is impossible without breaching privacy. We've blogged positively about the map in the past - we still feel positively towards it, it was well done and incredibly useful, and in an ideal world will become available again in the future. We're looking into fall-back options should that not end up happening, or if it should cease to be available in the future, but we had no intention of pulling people away from that version. As I said, the way this has transpired is not desirable, and we're taking it in the neck for it. We'll just have to suck that up for the time being. We're sorry that this is the situation."
So in other words, there is a reason for it we do not know yet of? Maybe having the map on a seperate server?
There's a reason for it that they're not allowed to speak of. It honestly sounds like the map being on their servers left open an attack vector for bad actors to me.
You can save data to the map and load data from the map, that has to be stored somewhere. If TIS stores all of that on their servers they may have found a vulnerability in that process.
It may be a security issue. I'm thankful the map project will continue even if the news is disappointing.
Isn't it weird that there was no warning? No coms from TIS about it. They knew well that it was a tool used by the majority. It's got to be either a security reason, or, cleaning up in prep for a publisher deal like situation. That would explain why the dude running it could not say anything as well.
From the steam discussions side:
CaptainBinky [developer]
;);)
I cannot get into specifics, but suffice to say this is not the preferred outcome from anyone's perspective.
It's so sad for me this is like losing Google Maps without the interactive map I'm just so screwed. Thank's tho for including the jpg of the b42 map then atleast I'm not completely lost.
I hope so much this project can be active again someday in another way good luck in managing that.