UPDATE: DayZ standalone has gone on to sell an insane 172,500 copies in its first 24 hours. Wowzers!

The new stats were announced by developer Bohemia's CEO Marek Spanel on his blog. He listed the number of currently online players as 142,403 with "many" bugs discovered and "hard" work ahead.

ORIGINAL STORY: It may have arrived a year later than Dean Hall first envisaged but DayZ's pulling power hasn't suffered, with 88,000 players stampeding the £19.99 Steam Early Access release in only 12 hours.

"88,000 survivors have joined DayZ alpha in the first 12 hours," announced Maruk from developer Bohemia on Twitter. "Thank you."

DayZ creator Dean Hall revealed that 19,000 unique players had shown in the game's database one hour after launch - a number increasing by 200 a second. "What the hell..." he wrote on Twitter.

One of those new players was Cliff Bleszinski, the former Gears of War frontman, who shared a picture of a DayZ bug he found. Dean Hall's father Graeme Hall even popped up on Twitter to congratulate his son.

This is all fascinating stuff.

Far more fascinating than watching Ian Higton's DayZ Let's Play from this afternoon, clearly.