Active Matter, the extraction shooter from developer Matter Team and publisher Gaijin Entertainment, has received its biggest update yet. Titled Gigastructure, the expansion adds two large-scale raid locations, a new PvP mode called Hired Ops, additional monsters, expanded weapon customization, and a permadeath system that raises the stakes well beyond what the genre typically asks of players.
The game drops operatives into a fractured multiverse where active matter, a substance that bends time and space, has warped everything it touches. Players are stuck in a time loop, always pulled back from death to the same point, and the only way out is to push deeper into quantum unstable zones where the substance concentrates. These zones are rich with loot but exist on borrowed time, collapsing with everything inside them if you don't extract first. The operatives belong to syndicates, organizations fighting for control over key sources of active matter as their path to breaking the loop. It's a setup that gives the extraction loop a reason to exist beyond just gear accumulation.
The zones sit outside normal space and time, which gives Matter Team license to build locations that feel genuinely strange. The headline addition in Gigastructure is the structure itself: a colossal brutalist megastructure drawn from Soviet-era Eastern European architecture but grotesquely twisted by active matter exposure. The other new location, the Park, takes a different approach entirely. Situated between two settlements called Shchegolsky and Dogorsk, it blends overgrown nature with something alien, dominated by a massive greenhouse. The game recommends flamethrowers and incendiary grenades for anyone hoping to survive the approach, which tells you something about what's growing in there. Older maps include a huge island dotted with rusty Soviet industrial complexes and cryptic science labs that were among the first to study active matter. Environmental variety matters because each location carries its own tactical problems and anomalies.
The core of Active Matter is PvPvE extraction raids. Players go solo or in small squads into unstable zones, hunting active matter and other loot. You can harvest the substance by killing creatures transformed by it, take it from other players, or pick it up directly from active matter clusters scattered through the environment. The zones are populated by those creatures alongside operatives and survivors who lost their minds after exposure, but other players remain the most dangerous threat. Weapons and gear are rooted in real-world military technology despite their multiverse origins, and the game leans into realistic gunplay and tactics. The new Hired Ops mode adds dedicated PvP where syndicates fight over passive sources of active matter using whatever they can bring into battle or craft on site. Beyond the shooting, the active matter itself warps the environment in ways that affect gameplay directly: anomalies alter gravitational force and space topology, and encounters with eerie objects inspired by SCP fiction add an unpredictable layer to every raid.
The Gigastructure update's most significant change might be what happens when you die. Permadeath now means losing game progress, and Matter Team has signaled that after the official launch the punishment will go further, with death costing players their current game edition. That's a level of consequence that pushes the extraction format into genuinely uncomfortable territory, where every raid carries weight that goes beyond losing a loadout. The syndicate system gives players a reason to cooperate, with base expansion and arsenal upgrades tied to the resources you extract, but the permadeath stakes mean that cooperation isn't just helpful, it's protective.
Active Matter takes the extraction shooter template and layers real consequence over it. The multiverse framing justifies the loop, the Soviet brutalist environments give the zones a distinct visual identity, and the permadeath system asks players to treat every raid like it could be their last in a way that isn't metaphorical.