Roughly a year since the standalone released on Steam Early Access by Bohemia Interactive, the popularity of the zombie-survival game DayZ can not be understated as it hit yet another milestone this week.
Growing from the popular ARMA II mod by Dean “Rocket” Hall, DayZ grew steadily from the start and by the time it was released as its own standalone product in December of 2013 the game was able to hit its first million copies sold within its first four weeks.
The multiplayer-focused zombie wasteland filled a hole in the zombie genre as the game brought an greater sense of realism with human needs like hunger and thirst needing to be tended to. Beyond the realistic game mechanics, the nature of a multiplayer world with players constantly struggling for survival creates a sense of intensity and contention between players.
Though the popularity of DayZ is great, Dean Hall has already elected to move on to new endeavors (though he has promises to continue supporting the title). Hall’s new projects with his own studio, RocketWerks, has no current public work to show, but he has suggested a vast variety of genres and styles to come in the future as he continues to build the studio.
DayZ is available on Steam for $34.99 and plans to bring the game to consoles have been in the works for some time, but no release date or time-frame has been announced as of yet.
