APEX
The Duel

GunZ: The DuelPrivate serverEU WestClosed beta

The GunZ you remember.
Without what ruined it.

Free, and nothing in the shop can change a fight. Every item you remember from ijji and Aeria is free too: no weight system, no bounty costs, no level gates. On top of that sits the part GunZ never had, which is a skill-matched Clan War ladder and hits decided by the match server instead of by whoever has the worse connection.

How to get inJoin the Discord

Latest Clan War results

Full match history
  1. Champletic emblem

    Champletic

    Winner

    1,777 MMR+45

    Sparta

    Loser

    1,890 MMR-20

    2v2 · Battle Arena · Champletic 4 – 0 Sparta

    Open the full scoreboard

  2. Sparta

    Winner

    1,910 MMR+8

    Champletic emblem

    Champletic

    Loser

    1,732 MMR-20

    2v2 · Town · Sparta 4 – 2 Champletic

    Open the full scoreboard

  3. Sparta

    Winner

    1,902 MMR+10

    Champletic emblem

    Champletic

    Loser

    1,752 MMR-24

    2v2 · Town · Sparta 4 – 1 Champletic

    Open the full scoreboard

  4. Sparta

    Winner

    1,892 MMR+11

    Champletic emblem

    Champletic

    Loser

    1,776 MMR-31

    2v2 · Battle Arena · Sparta 4 – 3 Champletic

    Open the full scoreboard

  5. Sparta

    Winner

    1,881 MMR+13

    Champletic emblem

    Champletic

    Loser

    1,807 MMR-40

    2v2 · Port · Sparta 4 – 1 Champletic

    Open the full scoreboard

  6. Sparta

    Winner

    1,868 MMR+16

    Champletic emblem

    Champletic

    Loser

    1,847 MMR-55

    2v2 · Town · Sparta 4 – 1 Champletic

    Open the full scoreboard

  7. Sparta

    Winner

    1,852 MMR+19

    Champletic emblem

    Champletic

    Loser

    1,902 MMR-76

    2v2 · Battle Arena · Sparta 4 – 1 Champletic

    Open the full scoreboard

  8. Sparta

    Winner

    1,832 MMR+23

    Champletic emblem

    Champletic

    Loser

    1,978 MMR-103

    2v2 · Garden · Sparta 4 – 3 Champletic

    Open the full scoreboard
  9. Champletic emblem

    Champletic

    Winner

    2,081 MMR+30

    Sparta

    Loser

    1,809 MMR-7

    2v2 · Town · Champletic 4 – 3 Sparta

    Open the full scoreboard
  10. Champletic emblem

    Champletic

    Winner

    2,052 MMR+42

    Sparta

    Loser

    1,816 MMR-8

    2v2 · Garden · Champletic 4 – 3 Sparta

    Open the full scoreboard
  11. Champletic emblem

    Champletic

    Winner

    2,010 MMR+68

    Sparta

    Loser

    1,824 MMR-10

    2v2 · Battle Arena · Champletic 4 – 2 Sparta

    Open the full scoreboard
  12. Champletic emblem

    Champletic

    Winner

    1,942 MMR+147

    Sparta

    Loser

    1,834 MMR-14

    2v2 · Garden · Champletic 4 – 3 Sparta

    Open the full scoreboard

Standings

The ladder

Full ladder

Closed beta results. These are real games from the closed beta, played before Season 3 opens. The field is small and most ratings are still provisional, so the standings will move a long way yet.

Clan ladder

MMR
  1. –Sparta0–01,641
  2. –Champletic emblemChampletic0–01,600
  3. –Requiem0–01,565
  4. –Mercury0–01,556
  5. –Vandetta0–01,555

Clan War standings.

All

Duel ladder

MMR
  1. –Tokyo2–0 · UwUuu1,734
  2. –Jiriutsu— · No clan1,690
  3. –Apex— · Requiem1,629
  4. –Ghost— · Sparta1,525
  5. –Astrae— · Britannia1,371

Solo 1v1 rating. A position needs 5 rated duels this season.

Duel K/D

K/D
  1. 1Tokyo65 kills3.25
  2. 2Apex71 kills1.58
  3. 3Ghost33 kills0.92

Career duel record. Minimum 25 duel kills.

Rated clan wars
101
Added input lag
0 ms
Every item
Free
Windows client
1.2 GB

Server

Closed beta

AccessInvite only, 20 seats
Keys left to claim7
Prime time20:00–23:00 CET, every day
Ladder nightsWednesday and Sunday
RegionEU West · Amsterdam
Client0.9.30
SeasonSeason 3

The client is not downloadable yet. There is no list to join — it is announced in the Discord and on this page at the same moment.

Why this one

Three things, and they are the whole pitch

GunZ is being relaunched officially, and there are private servers a decade older than this one. All of them are worth playing. None of them does these three things.

The server decides the fight

GunZ applied damage peer to peer: the shooter's machine told yours you were hit, and nothing sat between the two. Hits are validated on the match server now, against a rewind buffer built from measured ping — so a shot is judged against what the shooter actually saw, and a client that claims a hit it could not have made does not get one.

How the netcode works

K-Style is untouched, deliberately

Butterfly, half-step, slash-shot, reload-shot, wall cancel, dash cancel. Movement stays client-predicted with zero added input latency, and nothing in the animation-cancel path has been cleaned up, optimised, or fixed. Those delays are not bugs waiting for a refactor. They are the specification.

Nothing in the shop can win a fight

All weapons, melee and sets are re-balanced, and every weapon in a class carries the same stat block, so the only thing separating two shotguns is the mesh. The shop sells recoloured vanilla sets: vanilla stats, vanilla silhouette, no glow, and no visibility advantage, measured against the source texture rather than judged by eye. Two finished sets were thrown away for failing that check.

Server rules

Hit registration

Who decides you got hit

This is the difference, drawn. Everything else on this page follows from which box in the row is allowed to say you died.

Read the full netcode page

GunZ, and most servers running it

Peer-to-peer damage. Their client tells yours.

APEX: The Duel

Server-authoritative, with lag compensation.

GunZ, and most servers running it: Peer-to-peer damage. Their client tells yours. — APEX: The Duel: Server-authoritative, with lag compensation.

The rewind window is the server's own measurement of that player's ping. The client sends its timestamp and the server ignores it — a value a client can write is a value a client can lie about.

Movement

The techniques, and what protects them

K-Style is animation cancelling. It was never designed — it was found, in 2005, and it is the reason anyone still plays this game. Every technique below depends on a timing that a well-meaning refactor would remove.

The client files that own these are closed to cleanup work. Server-side hit validation was built around them rather than through them.All six, in detail

Get in

Three steps, about five minutes

  1. Download the client

    One archive, around 1.2 GB. No installer, no launcher account, nothing written outside the folder you extract it to.

  2. Run the launcher once

    It verifies the files against the server manifest and patches anything out of date, then starts the game.

  3. Register in the client

    Accounts are made on the login screen. During the closed beta that registration is invite-gated — ask in the Discord.

Full install and troubleshootingHow the netcode works

Latest

Patch notes

Everything that changed
    • Training room: Infinite ammo now works with reload-shot. Your clip never runs out, and you can still reload after every shot, so reload-shot and the reload cancels can be practised with it on.
    • You pick your team in the waiting room, not mid-match. Switching sides from inside a running match no longer works — you can still choose a team before joining a match that is already in progress.
    • Security and stability fixes across login, rooms and combat, and improved cheat detection. If something that used to work has stopped, tell us on Discord.
    • Damage numbers in casual rooms. Every hit you land shows what it did, just right of your crosshair — a shotgun blast is one number, and headshots show in crimson. Never in clan war, the ladder or tournaments. Options → Damage numbers turns them off.
    • Casual scoreboards show everyone’s damage instead of pellets. Ranked boards keep DMG, AIM and PELLETS, and the Classic clan war board now has the AIM column the APEX one already had.
    • Clan war keeps your own weapon when it is the same class as the preset — bring any shotgun or any katana and you play with it. The preset loadout had silently stopped applying on 9 September; that is fixed.
    • Training room: a Launch bot button and an Infinite ammo checkbox (or /botlaunch and /infammo), and the bot can now be killed.