14 DAY TRIAL // Survival game Dayz is certainly one of the hottest things right now, having sold more than 800k copies since it went live barely three weeks ago.
Some issues might get lost in all the racket. The fact that the game is barely playable is one of them. It's currently at version 0.3, and that means that it still has a long way to go before nearing anything resembling a release date.
In fact, the game is nowhere near a beta version yet. "We do not expect to reach beta status sooner than the end of 2014," announced Marek Spanel, boss of developer Bohemia, on the DayZ blog.
What is even more amazing is that Bohemia Interactive has even warned its fans not to buy the game, on the DayZ Steam page, unless they are prepared for an uphill struggle, lacking many of the features of finished titles. And in spite of that, players are already starting to populate the internet with great in-game stories.
Selling unfinished games of great potential seems to be a valid business strategy, and it's one that's certainly going to go a long way, as far as delivering an improved final experience goes, especially so with smaller developers who may not have the budgets needed for such developments right off the bat.
Developers usually take the Minecraft route, continually improving their games after release, once they got some momentum, but now this process is sped up by crowdfunding and the ever-growing popularity of early access development processes.