Alongside Rust and 7 Days To Die, DayZ is one of the most famous and active games in the survival genre. After difficult phases, the future of the zombie shooter looks bright, thanks to strong player numbers and new expansion.
This article is a guest article written by our reader Wieland Wüller.
DayZ may already be almost six years old, but Bohemia Interactive’s survival shooter is currently celebrating a second spring of sorts. The number of players is increasing, the recent reviews are “Very Positive” and more viewers are tuning in on Twitch when the game is streamed.
A few years ago, such a positive development seemed almost impossible. Parts of the community had almost given up on DayZ. MeinMMO reader Wieland explains why the survival title is currently rising from the ashes like the proverbial phoenix.
A breath of fresh air and a unique gaming experience
DayZ was something special among zombie survival games when it launched in December 2013. On the one hand, there were few online titles with this topic at the time, and on the other hand, they did not have the size and design of DayZ.
At that time, resources necessary for survival were much less common than they are today. In order to still have a chance of survival, the players had to form alliances with each other. However, this was not without danger, as the fellow survivors could only be trusted to a limited extent due to the scarcity of resources.
DayZ is getting a new expansion – here is the trailer:
DayZ Frostline – expansion of the survival game will be released in autumn 2024
More videos
Autoplay
Players who were outrageously lucky and found a weapon and its equipment and ammunition had a huge advantage over other players. This circumstance could really get the adrenaline pumping and create a lot of excitement.
This concept and the associated tension among the players were extremely well received, meaning that DayZ was able to record over 45,000 simultaneous players immediately upon release. The game was able to maintain this number – with certain fluctuations, of course – over the next three years.
DayZ is experiencing a long early access phase
Contrary to what is stated on the Steam page, DayZ was already available as an early access version in December 2013. Early Access refers to games that are still in early alpha and therefore potentially have a lot of bugs and inconsistencies.
The official release version of DayZ was only released in December 2018. From the early access phase to the official release, five years of development passed, during which a lot happened. However, this time was also marked by many mistakes and mishaps.
DayZ had enormous performance difficulties in Early Access. These were so serious that numerous YouTube channels have designed their channel concepts to optimize and improve the gaming experience.
Some of the recommended adjustments were specific. Players often had to adjust the game’s configuration files manually. This was not only annoying, but also a time-consuming process, as each configuration had to be tailored to your own hardware. And that to achieve 30 to 40 frames per second.
Confusing update philosophy
In addition to many errors, the developers urgently had to improve performance. However, Bohemia Interactive’s update philosophy caused a bad mood in the community. The important patches only brought new content instead of repairing the foundation. The result was an increasingly poor gaming experience.
Instead of developer Bohemia Interactive addressing the game’s core problems, the updates did one thing above all else: they added content that didn’t work properly and left the game in a worse state.
For example, one of the larger updates brought vehicles that didn’t work from start to finish. The controls felt bad, and the carts also caused server-wide connection issues and client crashes.
There were similar problems with other patches. When the survival mechanics were expanded to include illnesses, these caused unnecessary character deaths for no apparent reason, which caused frustration. Performance and balancing improvements documented in the patch notes had little effect.
Flyed high, fell low
In June 2016, Bohemia Interactive released a promising update for DayZ. This was urgently needed as the number of players continued to fall. Patch 0.60 introduced a new rendering engine that was intended to improve the game graphically and fix many of the performance issues and bugs.
Unfortunately, the patch fell short of players’ expectations. Many of the long-known bugs have not been fully fixed or even fixed at all. Although the performance has been improved, the community expected much more.
DayZ’s player numbers continued to decline until only a few thousand players remained in 2017. In addition, patch 0.60 was followed by another drought period in which updates came even less frequently than in previous years.
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes
Looking at the evolution of today’s gaming landscape, it was unthinkable for many gamers that DayZ would ever be completed. However, things turned out differently. The final release of DayZ was surprisingly announced for December 2018.
It was a bit bumpy, but it was able to fix many of the game’s problems. Bohemia Interactive continued to work on DayZ afterwards to make the game more attractive to the masses and to regain the lost trust of fans.
The result of these efforts: the number of players has grown steadily since the release. The current Steam charts are optimistic about the game, as DayZ was able to break the mark of 73,418 simultaneously active players in January 2024. The 24-hour peak is almost 50,000 players.
The game now also offers enormous mod support, which has resulted in many community branches, such as pure PvP servers or the popular role-playing servers.
DayZ as a positive example
With DayZ, Bohemia Interactive has shown what consequences it can have when a promising title is made worse with insufficient and slow updates and the trust of the players gradually disappears.
However, Bohemia Interactive also shows how things can work if you stay on the ball and gradually improve the gaming experience with the right updates and adjustments. Players’ confidence is returning and the numbers are rising again.
DayZ’s early access phase was rocky and dark. In addition to regular updates, the game now also receives content patches. A major expansion has now been announced for autumn 2024: In the survival shooter DayZ you will soon conquer a dangerous snowy landscape