DayZ dev mulls free-to-play standalone game as mod nears 500k players

DayZ creator Dean Hall has revealed new facts and figures regarding his ArmA II open world multiplayer modification that has taken PC gaming by storm.

Hall, who works for ArmA developer Bohemia Interactive as a multiplayer designer, told Eurogamer that as of this past Friday 400,000 players were playing DayZ. The following day that number had already grown to 420,000.

"We’ve got 420,000 now. We’ll have 430,000 tomorrow," Hall said, adding that he believes the mod will eventually ‘outsell’ the game it’s require d to run on.

Currently we’re running 22,000 concurrent at full peak, and 10,000 off peak, which is pretty huge numbers considering the original data structure and system was designed to handle 100 concurrents, and two servers,” Hall revealed. We now have 1000 servers. We’re getting 110,000 players in a 24 hour period at the moment.”

Hall went on to share his wishes for DayZ to become a standalone game, perhaps as a free-to-play affair. Those grand plans aside, the developer is also looking to add the new feature of dogs (specifically German Shepherds) in the near future.