DayZ Sells 88,000 Copies In 12 Hours

It didn't take long for word to spread that the DayZ standalone had become available. Bohemia Interactive never announced it. Frontman and lead designer Dean “Rocket” Hall never let anyone know. It was a silent release that spread like wildfire throughout the community by word of mouth alone (and a little help from pesky gaming media) and it managed to net Bohemia a breezy 88,000 buyers in less than 12 hours.

There are still lots of people who don't know what a DayZ is; there are still tons of people who don't know that DayZ's standalone is actually out and available. Again, there was no big announcement, just a silent roll out.

According to Eurogamer, they spotted a tweet Maruk, a developer at Bohemia Interactive, where he stated on Twitter...

The one bit from the article that seemed a little too surreal to be true was this piece of information...

So Cliffy B., took time out of his day to stop trolling and find bugs in DayZ? Man, that's some bizarre stuff right there. Even more than that is the fact that he's supporting a game that completely flies in the face of his earlier comments that newer games couldn't be innovative or creative or bigger or far reaching without being laced with restrictive DRM and tons of microtransactions. Funny, that little thing called life.

The article also further reveals that within an hour of the game launching, more than 19,000 unique players were logging into DayZ and 200 players were joining after every second.

Amazingly enough, it at least gives you a metric of the influence gaming media has on spreading the word about a game people actually do want to buy.

88,000 people in 12 hours is pretty impressive.

I'm curious what the numbers will look like by the end of the week?

DayZ itself is a survival-horror, zombie apocalypse game. Your main goal is simply to survive. It sounds easy but you have to deal with infections, hunger, thirst, cold, heat, exhaustion and desperation. You'll have to contend with weather, broken bones, bandits, thieves, murderers, noobs and, of course, zombies.

The game, in its current state, is still an alpha. This means that there are plenty of broken parts and tons of unfinished elements. Vehicles aren't in just yet and weapons are limited. If you don't mind dealing with tons of bugs and glitches, you can pick up a digital copy of DayZ's standalone right now for only $29.99 from the Steam Store.