Creating an Unturned dedicated server

Unturned is one of the few survival games whose dedicated server runs comfortably on a modest machine. That explains the sheer number of community servers — and why many people start one without reading anything first.

What you need

• SteamCMD, which pulls the server application — separate from the game, installable with anonymous login.
• An open port, plus the two after it. Unturned uses a range of three consecutive ports: opening only one gives a server that boots and stays unfindable.
• A machine with decent clock speed. Unturned is light on memory but clock-sensitive, especially with many active zombies.

The install

SteamCMD fetches the dedicated server. On first boot it creates an instance: a folder named after whatever you call it, holding that server's entire configuration.

This confuses people: a single installation can run several servers, each with its own instance. The instance name is therefore a launch parameter, not a detail.

Files appear after the first launch

Commands.dat and Config.json do not exist until the server has started once. Trying to edit them beforehand is the most common source of confusion.

The correct sequence is always the same: launch once, stop, edit, relaunch.

The mistakes that leave a server invisible

• One port open instead of three. The server runs, the logs are clean, and it shows up nowhere.
• No map set. With no map line in Commands.dat, the server loads the default one rather than the one you expected.
• A different instance name between two launches. You get a second blank server, and the first appears to have vanished.

Checking it worked

The logs state the loaded map, the server name and the port. If what you read there differs from your configuration, it is almost always because the loaded instance is not the one you edited.

If you would rather skip this stage, our Unturned server hosting delivers a created instance with configuration files already generated and accessible.