DayZ Has Clawed its Way Out of Early Access and to 1.0

Just shy of its 5 year anniversary, Bohemia declares success and releases DayZ 1.0 for PC.

DayZ will have been in development for five years on December 16, and just four days before that, Bohemia has decided to close the book on early access development of the zombie survival title that has arguably created an entirely new genre. While the 1.0 update leaves out many features that were planned or expected to make it into a full-fledged DayZ release, it seems that it was time to rip off the band-aid and get on with it.

It’s worth noting that DayZ has only left early access and hit 1.0 on the PC at this time. Bohemia also promises that development will continue beyond this update and that many features are indeed still planned. Frankly, after many years and status reports talking about 1.0 being a feature-complete release target, it seems fairly apparent that a decision was made just to do it and do it soon. The community appears largely divided when it comes to the reaction of ending early access and releasing a 1.0 version, something that typically designates a title is complete.

Over the past days the team has come closer together and worked more passionately than ever to make this important leap happen. And of course, we have seen the support from our community, be it in Tweets, PMs or via Reddit. We want to thank every single one of you for your patience and endurance through the years. We know there is still a mountain of work ahead of us and the team is not taking this milestone as an opportunity to rest, but as a chance to recover, evaluate, and plan for future.

It’s extremely common these days for developers to provide continuous updates and content for their games, of course, and I would expect DayZ to be no different. Nonetheless, no other title has received as much pressure and public coverage of its path to a 1.0 release date as DayZ, and the manner in which we finally arrived here seems forced. Only time will tell how things progress from here.

If you’re one of the few people who hasn’t given DayZ a try yet, you’ll be able to play it for free on Steam until December 17. You’ll just have to decide where you want to spend your time, in zombie-riddled Chernarus, or The Crew 2‘s free weekend.