Bohemia opens up DayZ servers for monetisation

DayZ hosts can now make money from their servers.

As of last Tuesday, December 1st, those running third-party ‘private shard’ DayZ servers can charge players to access their games

This is as long as the extra fees do not provide paying players with different gameplay benefits, but selling purely cosmetic perks and items is allowed.

Bohemia added in its announcement that this includes limiting access only to paying players, and that product placement, in-game advertising and sponsorship is permitted.

Arma 3 similarly allowed hosts to charge for their servers back in February.

Again, no gameplay-affecting perks are allowed, but cosmetic sales, product placement, virtual ads and sponsorship is all fine.

Hosts can also collect donations, but donations differ in that non-donating players must still be allowed to access the server.

Bohemia notes that both monetisation systems are trial runs – Arma 3 servers will no longer be monetised from January 31st 2016 and DayZ servers will similarly return to free access on May 31st 2016.

Following the test, the studio says it will ‘evaluate’ the effects of monetisation on the community.