Is Urban Dead still online?
No. Urban Dead shut down on Mar 14, 2025.
Kevan Davis's text-based zombie-apocalypse MMO set in the quarantined city of Malton. Shut down in March 2025. [1]
Urban Dead closed on Mar 14, 2025. The creator closed it citing the UK Online Safety Act. Read the announcement ↗
What is Urban Dead?
From Wikipedia
Urban Dead was a free-to-play HTML/text-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game created by British developer Kevan Davis. Set in a quarantined region of the fictional city of Malton, it dealt with the aftermath of a zombie outbreak. Players entered the game either as a survivor or a zombie, each with different abilities and limitations. Survivors became zombies when they are killed, while zombies could be "revivified" with appropriate technology, returning to life as a survivor – any character played for long would thus spend some time alive and some as a zombie. There were no non-player characters in the game: all survivors and zombies were controlled by players.
Urban Dead went live on July 3, 2005, and shut down on March 14, 2025. The shutdown was stated to be the result of the Online Safety Act in the UK, which they stated brought the threat of "corporate-sized fines" to independent solo web projects with social features.
Excerpt from the Wikipedia article “Urban Dead”, by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Unmodified except for paragraph trimming.
In this directory, Urban Dead sits in the classic web collection and is tagged rpg (15 games), text (17 games), zombies (1 games) and mmo (19 games). It launched in 2005, which places it on our timeline.
Fact file
- First released
- Jul 3, 2005
- Genre
- survival horror
- Platforms
- web browser
- Game modes
- multiplayer video game
- Country of origin
- United Kingdom
Source: Wikidata (CC0). Wikidata is community-edited; corrections welcome there.
How to play
- 01The official servers are closed, so there is nothing to join. See the graveyard and revived games for what happened next.
Platform notes
- Browser
- Was playable in the browser until it closed.
- Account
- Not stated on the homepage.
- Mobile
- Not stated on the homepage.
Status history
| Checked (UTC) | Status | Response |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 29, 2026, 08:46 UTC | Down | -- |
| Oct 29, 2026, 08:24 UTC | Down | -- |
Per-check history started on Oct 29, 2026. Status changes across all games are in the status log.
Urban Dead: FAQ
▸Is Urban Dead still online?
No. Urban Dead officially shut down on Mar 14, 2025. The creator closed it citing the UK Online Safety Act. The official site (urbandead.com) may still show a farewell page.
▸When did Urban Dead come out?
Urban Dead launched in 2005 (source: urbandead.com).
▸Do I need to download anything or make an account to play Urban Dead?
Not applicable any more: Urban Dead has shut down.
▸What's the official Urban Dead website?
https://www.urbandead.com/. Still Online only links to official game sites, never to re-uploads or mirror sites.
▸What games are similar to Urban Dead?
If you like Urban Dead, try Bootleggers, Kingdom of Loathing, Omerta, Torn.
If you like Urban Dead
Bootleggers
Online · 514ms · bootleggers.us
Free browser-based mafia MMORPG; compete with other players in a strategy crime game.
#rpg #text #crime
Kingdom of Loathing
Online · 1009ms · kingdomofloathing.com · 2003
A free, comical browser-based multiplayer RPG, still getting small updates two decades on.
#rpg #text #comedy
Omerta
Online · 84ms · barafranca.com · 2003
Text-based gangster MMORPG: work your way up 1930s organized crime.
#rpg #text #crime
Torn
Online · 62ms · torn.com
Text-based crime RPG set in Torn City, with factions, markets, poker and thousands of active players.
#rpg #text #crime
Achaea
Online · 486ms · achaea.com · 1997
Roleplay-focused, text-based MUD from Iron Realms Entertainment.
#mud #text #rpg
Aetolia
Online · 389ms · aetolia.com
"The Midnight Age": a text-based roleplaying MUD with a player-run world and 20+ classes.
#mud #text #rpg