DayZ standalone sells 173k in 24 hours

The standalone version of DayZ launched yesterday, with its creator, Dean “Rocket,” Hall suggesting that only the hardcore fans should drop £20 on it, as it is in a very early alpha stage and is therefore not fully featured or even that polished at the moment, but it is at least out there. That didn't deter fans though, as in just 24 hours, over 172,000 copies were sold.

These stats were announced by Bohemia CEO Marek Spanel on his blog (via Eurogamer), who quoted 172,500 copies sold and a total of 142,403 concurrent players. However he also cited that “many,” bugs had been discovered and that the work ahead would be hard.

It's positive though, as was Dean Hall's reaction to the mass influx of players, saying on his twitter: “about 200 players a second at the moment in the database… what the hell.”

Even Ex-Epic developer Cliff Blezinski was playing it, sending in this image as his first bug report

However it wasn't long before he announced a patch as well, suggesting the Bohemia guys had been pulling an all nighter on this one. It will address lots of known bugs, as well as adding in a few new features. The list of tweaks and improvements includes:

• Increased battery drain by flashlights
• Server tab defaults to internet
• Drinking directly from wells works now
• Disabled head movement when unconscious
• Shock damage recovery speed increased
• You can now force feed other players
• Rain should look prettier now
• You can open cans with sharp tools, but it damages them
• Greeting animations switched to left hand to avoid item clipping

More patches are expected to follow in short order, as with almost 200,000 players (a number this game will surely break today) there's going to be a lot of bug reports.

KitGuru Says: Any of you guys tooling around the new Chernarus at the moment? What's it like?

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