by Stacy Jones on Jan 06, 2014
The original DayZ struck a chord with fans when Bohemia Interactives Dean Rocket Hall released it as a mod for ARMA II. The mod quickly gathered a cult-like following, providing players with a grittier survival game filled with zombies and other players that often times are more deadly than the zombies given their motivation to alleviate you of your worldly possessions.
The success of DayZ prompted some to emulate the games success such as Infestation: Survivor Stories, formerly known as The WarZ, a game which had its own set of controversies following its launch on Steam that led to a temporary removal and later a name change. In some cases, though they aren't connected in the slightest, some people confused DayZ with The WarZ due to the name similarity. But despite that, DayZ continued to grow and Dean Hall eventually announced a standalone version of of the game based on hs popular mod.
DayZ headed to Steam early access last month where it quickly racked up over 400k sales. But as of now, DayZs sales have already topped more than 800k according to a recent post by Dean Hall on Reddit, and it hasn't even been on Steam a full month yet. At $29.99 a pop that translates to roughly $23,992,000. Give or take whatever the current number of sales is, a number that even surprised Hall at this point.
"We (bohemia and I) had very ambitious plans for 2014 already, however this amount of sales was completely unexpected, Hall wrote in a Reddit post. Honestly, 250k within a quarter was what I would have considered a success. So to move nearly 800,000 in under a month is crazy.
We'll be finalizing our roadmap in mid January, but it is safe to say that this kind of result will be having a very positive effect on that roadmap.
You can check out DayZ on Steams early access. Just be prepared for game breaking issues as it is technically still in alpha, something Hall continues to warn people about.