DayZ getting a standalone release – Video Games Update
DayZ, an openworld Zombie mod for the first person shooter ARMA 2, will be getting its own stand alone release because of the immense popularity amongst gamers.
ARMA 2 is a tactical military shooter developed by Bohemia Interactive and was released in June 2009. An expansion pack called operation Arrowhead was released one year later in 2010. The game was praised for its realism and graphics but highly criticised
for the lack of polish and the amount of bugs present. It managed to score 77 percent on Metacritic.
ARMA 2 initial sales were lack-lustre but the release of the DayZ mod has managed to move around 100,000 copies of the game only months after launch. The Mod is developed by Dean Hall who worked as a multiplayer designer for ARMA 2 at Bohemia Interactive.
The Mod’s true purpose was to pitch a game idea to developers but after the positive response it got from gamers all around the world, Hall plans to develop a standalone version of the mod and wants it to be free to play.
Currently more than 420,000 gamers are playing the mod and more than 10,000 new people join every day. “There are no rules. There are no objectives. It was really just designed as a tech demo for something I'd been pitching for a while," stated Hall while
explaining the game-play.
"Currently we're running 22,000 concurrent at full peak, and 10,000 off peak, which is pretty huge numbers considering the original data structure and system was designed to handle 100 concurrents, and two servers, we now have 1000 servers. We're getting
110,000 players in a 24 hour period at the moment," Revealed Hall during developer session at Rezzed revealing how successful the mod has become in such a short amount of time.
The CEO of Bohemia Interactive, Marek Spanel, praised the DayZ mod and stated that the mod was good enough to merit a standalone game as it is singlehandedly driving the sales of ARMA 2 three years after the game’s release date.
The DayZ mod is currently free and can be downloaded from their website but requires the game ARMA 2 be installed on your machine.
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