DayZ Just Broke Its Concurrent User Record Almost 9 Years After Its Early Access Release

thegamer.com:

As is only appropriate for a game about surviving the zombie apocalypse, DayZ seems to be getting a second lease on life. DayZ is not just back from the dead, but it's also setting concurrent user records on Steam.

According to Steam Charts, DayZ hit an all-time concurrent user record of 58,240 over the past 24 hours. As of the time of this writing, the game has around 45,000 concurrent users, which is around its previous record set way back in December 2013 when DayZ first entered early access.

Related: An Interview With DayZ Creator Dean Hall On Icarus, The “Evolution Of The Survival Genre”

In fact, DayZ has been trending upward ever since the game bottomed out at around 3,000 concurrent players in the middle of 2018. A lengthy early access period obviously went far longer than most players were willing to wait, but emerging from early access in December 2018 brought many of those players back. Iterative content drops since then seem to have convinced more and more players that DayZ is in it for the long haul, and that's bringing new players into the zombie survival shooter.

Most recently, DayZ dropped update 1.17 with new weapons such as the CR-550 Savanna rifle, P1 Pistol, and Longhorn pistol. It also added more crafting recipes such as improvised gas mask filters and craftable spears, as well as an alternative control scheme for better accessibility. The update also brought the Walpurgis Night event which runs from now until May 9.

It's not just the content either. DayZ is getting a lot of advertising just through social media. Over the past 30 days, DayZ streams had 81% more hours watched on Twitch, with 20% more channels created and a jump of over 300% in max viewers, and Google reports that searches for DayZ