14 DAY TRIAL // The DayZ standalone edition alpha, barely launched on Steam Early Access two days ago, already managed to sell an impressive 175K copies, during its first 24 hours alone.
DayZ began its journey as a mod for popular shooter Arma 2. The mod was a gritty zombie apocalypse survival game that truly tested its players' skills and revealed the importance of teamplay in a very realistic manner.
Not relying on slaying countless legions of the undead, the mod instead relied on portraying a more accurate depiction of players trying not to get killed, sneaking around to scavenge and dealing only with unavoidable threats, rather than charging head on into the fray.
The mod quickly became wildly popular and Bohemia Interactive decided to release a standalone version of DayZ. Before starting the alpha, they even warned people that is wasn't going to be a pleasant experience and it's meant only for hardcore fans that want to help develop the game.
Nonetheless, more than 19K players had joined the DayZ alpha within an hour of launch, with ranks growing by around 200 new players per second, according to EuroGamer.
All that amounted to the incredible figure of 175K sold units within the first day of availability, for a game even its developer warned against buying.