The undead are, like, so hot right now.
With the success of The Walking Dead, World War Z and Dead Rising, should it really come as a surprise that another zombie-related video game is doing well? In the case of Bohemia Interactive’s DayZ, it actually does.
Within just four weeks of the game’s release on Steam Early Access, the open-world zombie survival game has sold over 1 million copies. For a game that’s still in the early stages of alpha testing, that’s impressive. Dean Hall, the game’s creator, made the announcement on Twitter yesterday evening.
Hall says the figures are “way, way beyond” what he ever expected.
“We’re just blown away with the success of it,” Hall told Polygon. “We obviously knew that there was strong interest in the concept, but weren’t sure whether that interest was just ‘hype’ or whether it would actually translate into real sales. I remember when we finally pushed the button, I had this moment of panic when I wondered if many people would really buy it.”
Turns out Hall had no reason to worry. DayZ has stayed at the top of Steam’s best sellers list since it’s release on December 16th, and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. Rust, another open-world survival game still in alpha, currently holds spot number two; a phenomena Hall says is “shots fired” against traditional game publishing.
DayZ alpha is available on Steam for $29.99, but comes with a warning to expect “serious issues and possible interruptions of game functioning.” Beta is not expected to be released until the end of 2014.
