The DayZ Alpha is available for early adopters from Steam for 23.99 Euros. Please be aware that our Early Access offer is a representation of our core pillars, and the framework we have created around them. It’s a work in progress and therefore contains a variety of bugs. We strongly advise you not to buy and play the game at this stage unless you clearly understand what Early Access means and are interested in participating in the ongoing development cycle. Please keep in mind that we do not expect to reach Beta status sooner than the end of 2014.

The initial weeks of the DayZ Alpha were really busy despite the holiday season. We’ve received incredible support from you, DayZ users, with over 875 thousand copies of the game sold in just three weeks and thousands of useful posts and reports that already led to some notable game improvements during the holiday period with much more to come in 2014. The level of support and confidence we have received from the DayZ community makes us even more dedicated to the game than we were in the past 16 months of DayZ standalone development.

We didn’t want to compromise on the brutal and unforgiving nature of the early days of the DayZ mod so we’re very surprised to see such interest as this clearly is not a game for everyone, especially considering that there are some radical changes under the hood in comparison to the mod. These changes may be more subtle than when comparing the relatively limited amount of content in the standalone game against the mod in its very mature state itself, but it should be much more valid in the long term for the overall game experience and of course we’re aware how much more work is ahead. We’re already seeing unbelievable player stories happening every day in the game even in its very limited Alpha and we’re focused to make huge progress in 2014 on many areas of the game. In the short term, we’re going to focus on the most critical problems you’re experiencing atm and at the same time we’re going to work on the road to the DayZ Beta. We’re going to re-evaluate the roadmap plans in the second half of January but here is a list of the existing top priorities on our to-do list to make DayZ really meet or hopefully exceed your expectations:

Server performance, stability and security

Animals & hunting

Cooking & gathering resources

Playable user customizable vehicles

Player created constructions in the environment

More complex interactions with the environment and crafting options

Streamlined user actions and interface

Control and animations expanded and improved for fluidity

Upgraded graphics and physics engine (including ragdoll, etc.)

Support of user mods and more flexibility for user hosted servers and game types

Happy New Year and thank you all for the incredible support so far, without the DayZ and Arma user communities, this game would never be possible!